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Dessert

Fruit Cookies

Fruit Cookies are sweet baked cookies containing currants, raisins, pecans, orange peel, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Fruit Cookies

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fruit Cookies

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

  3. Add the sweet milk and mix well.

  4. In another bowl, combine the flour and baking powder.

  5. Gradually add the flour mixture to the butter mixture.

  6. Incorporate the eggs, currants, raisins, pecans, orange peel, whiskey or wine, cinnamon, and mixed spices.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter onto a baking pan.

  2. Bake until golden brown.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  4. Butter + pecanstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,416 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and give the cookies a tender, rich texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cookies and, creamed with butter, helps create a light structure and browning.
Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cookies rise and lighten.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and moisture to the cookies.
Currants
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy fruit pieces throughout the cookies.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. Baking only until golden brown keeps the cookies moist inside; overbaking dries them out, since sugar and fruit continue to firm as they cool. Watch color rather than the clock, because the record gives no baking time.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, milk, flour, egg, raisin, pecans):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, milk, flour, egg, raisin, pecans. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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