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Dessert

Fruit Cookies

Fruit cookies made with butter, sugar, cinnamon, nuts, currants, raisins, flour, baking powder, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Cream the butter in a bowl.

Make the dough

  1. Add sugar and egg to the creamed butter and mix well.

  2. In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon.

  3. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture.

  4. Fold in the chopped nuts, currants, and raisins.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto a buttered baking sheet, spacing them one inch apart.

  2. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes until lightly golden.

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. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Creamed butter gives the cookies their rich, tender base and helps them spread.
Egg
Binds the mixture and adds structure and richness to the dough.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cookies rise and lighten.
Chopped nuts
Add texture and a toasted, crunchy contrast to the soft dough.

The step that matters

Spacing the spoonfuls. Drop cookies spread as they bake, so placing them one inch apart keeps them from merging into one sheet and lets them brown evenly.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, cinnamon, egg, nuts, flour, raisin. 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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