Name: Boston Cookies
Ingredients: 1½ cups sugar; 1 cup butter (scant); 3 cups flour; ⅔ cup sweet milk; 1 cup seeded and chopped raisins; 1 teaspoon baking soda; 1 teaspoon ground cloves; 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon; 3 eggs

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Boston 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

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.
Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.
Stir in the sweet milk, raisins, baking soda, cloves, and cinnamon.
Gradually add the flour, mixing until combined.

Bake and serve

Drop spoonfuls of the batter into buttered tins or gem pans.
Bake until golden brown, then frost as desired.

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.

Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,390 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,341 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

Eggs: Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Butter: Creamed with sugar to trap air and add richness and tenderness.
Flour: Forms the main structure of the cookies as the batter sets.
Baking soda: Reacts with the batter to help the cookies rise and brown.
Sugar: Creamed with butter for tenderness and sweetness, and helps browning.

The step that matters

Adding the flour. Mixing in flour only until combined keeps the batter tender. Overmixing develops gluten, which can make the cookies tough.

Swap the clove

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

Nutmegfits better
Cardamomfits better
Clovethe original
Allspicefits about as well

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