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Dessert

Nut Oatmeal Cookies

A cookie made with butter, lard, sugar, egg, milk, oats, nuts, raisins, flour, salt, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, and allspice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Nut Oatmeal Cookies

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Cream the butter and lard together.

  2. Gradually add the sugar and beat in the egg.

  3. Mix in the milk, oats, nuts, and raisins.

  4. Sift the flour with the salt, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, and allspice.

  5. Combine the dry ingredients with the wet mixture.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls onto a buttered baking sheet.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 15 minutes.

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.

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. Raisin + flourtop 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. Nuts + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + oatstop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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
Adds richness and flavor, and helps the cookies spread and stay tender.
Lard
Adds fat that keeps the cookies tender and helps them spread.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the cookies brown at the edges.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds structure as the cookies set.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Rolled oats
Add chewy texture and body to the dough.

The step that matters

Combine the dry ingredients with the wet mixture. Mixing just until combined keeps the dough tender. Overmixing after the flour goes in develops gluten, which can make the cookies tough and dense.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, milk, oats, raisin, flour. 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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