Skip to main content
Baking

Oatmeal Cookies

A baked cookie made with sugar, sour milk, shortening, flour, raisins, oatmeal, nuts, cinnamon, baking soda, nutmeg, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Oatmeal Cookies

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Oatmeal 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the dough

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

  2. In a large bowl, mix together the sugar, sour milk, shortening, and eggs.

  3. Add the flour, raisins, uncooked oatmeal, nuts, cinnamon, baking soda, nutmeg, and salt. Mix well.

Bake

  1. Drop the dough by teaspoonfuls onto a buttered baking sheet, spacing them three inches apart.

  2. Bake for 10-12 minutes or 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  4. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Shortening
Adds fat that keeps the cookies tender and helps them spread.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure as they set in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to produce gas that lifts the cookies.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds tang and softness.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the cookies brown and crisp at the edges.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.

The step that matters

Spacing the dough on the baking sheet. The dough spreads as it bakes, so cookies placed too close can merge. Leaving about three inches between them lets each cookie spread and brown evenly.

Swap the nuts

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, flour, raisin, egg, cinnamon, nutmeg. 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.

More oatmeal cookies recipes

Date 3 See all 164 →

You might also like

Delicate CakeDelicate Cake246 recipesBoiled FrostingBoiled Frosting69 recipesCitron CakeCitron Cake68 recipesScotch CakeScotch Cake63 recipes