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Dessert

Prune Cookies

Cookies made with chopped prunes, egg, brown sugar, shortening, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon 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 ↓

Prune Cookies

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Combine chopped prunes, egg or egg yolks, brown sugar, melted shortening, and baking soda in a mixing bowl.

  2. Beat until light and creamy.

  3. Sift salt, nutmeg, cinnamon, flour, and baking powder.

  4. Add sifted mixture to the dough and mix well.

Shape the cookies

  1. Turn dough onto a floured board, roll it out, and cut into desired shapes.

  2. Roll the dough thicker for soft cookies.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Prunes
Provide moisture and natural sweetness, giving the cookies a soft, chewy texture.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds structure and richness.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and promotes browning and a tender texture.
Shortening
Adds fat for tenderness and a short, crumbly texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidic ingredients to leaven the dough and promote browning.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.

The step that matters

Roll the dough thicker for soft cookies. Thickness controls moisture loss in the oven. Thicker dough keeps more moisture and bakes to a softer center, while thin dough dries out and turns crisp.

“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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