When Snickerdoodles Had Raisins

Back when I was researching historic cookies for theKitchn.com's Cookie Time Machine, one of the options for the 1920s was snickerdoodles. My husband had requested them, and I'd found several recipes in my 1920s cookbooks. So I scanned a recipe and sent it to my editor, only to have her respond with, "Snickerdoodles are great, but why does this recipe call for raisins?" 

I was horrified. I hadn't even realized raisins were in the recipe. We ended up choosing Orange Drop Cookies, as they fit the trends of the decade better, but I got curious. I started looking up other Snickerdoodle recipes from the 1920s. And friends, they ALL had raisins in them. 

​What on earth was going on? 

I dug a little deeper, and the trend continued.

1903 - the October, 1903 issue of Home Science Magazine has Mary Johnson Bailey Lincoln's recipe for snickerdoodles with, you guessed it, raisins.

1908 - The L.W. Cook Book snickerdoodle recipe calls for just "a few raisins." 

1911 - the July, 1911 issue of Good Housekeeping​ magazine has a snickerdoodle recipe with raisins in it.

1911 - Cook Book of the Ladies Village Improvement Society of East Hampton, Long Island calls their snickerdoodle recipe a "Pennsylvania Dutch" dish, and calls for running the raisins through a meat grinder.

1914 - The "Home" Cook Book from the Children's Summer Home of Cinnaminson, NJ has recipes for snickerdoodles with and without raisins. 

1916 - The August 1, 1916 issue of The Gas Age magazine has a snickerdoodle recipe that calls for both dates and nuts. 

1917 - the Tried and True Cook Book by the Women's War League of Mexico City has a snickerdoodle recipe that calls for raisins, but suggests that "nuts or shredded cocoanut may be substituted for the raisins." 

1918 - Even the December, 1918 issue of Gleanings in Bee Culture, a magazine for beekeepers, has a snickerdoodle recipe that calls for honey and, you guessed it, raisins.

1920 - The Home-maker's Cook Book by Mabel Marie Horton snickerdoodle recipe calls for currants, instead of raisins.

1920 - the July, 1920 issue of Gas And Electric News has a snickerdoodle recipe that calls "dates or raisins" AND nuts "peanuts are good!"

1922 - the Delta Gamma Cook Book snickerdoodle recipe calls for currants, instead of raisins.

1922 - the Kato Cook Book snickerdoodle recipe also calls for currants.

Not everyone was on the raisin train. The A.A. Cook Book (1895), The Home-Maker (April, 1889), Good Living and How to Prepare It (1905), Recipes Collected by the Ladies of the Presbyterian Church of Kingston, Penn'a (1907), Tried and True: A Collection of Approved Recipes (1907), The Bon Ton Cook Book (1909), Two Hundred Recipes for Making Desserts (1912), The Skaneateles Cook Book (1915), and The Cooking Club Magazine (July, 1916) all have snickerdoodle recipes without raisins, currants, dates, or any other ingredients other than cinnamon and sugar (usually).

Snickerdoodles themselves don't seem to enter the lexicon under that name until 1895, which was the earliest recipe I could find under that name. I find it interesting that the two 19th century recipes I could find do not call for raisins or currants, but by the time we're in the 20th century, they do. This might have something to do with the proliferation of the seedless raisin industry in California at the end of the 19th century. Today, nearly all table grapes and raisins sold in the US are seedless, based in large part on the viticulture and research of William Thompson in the 19th century. It was he who developed seedless grapes and introduced them to California in the late 19th century. California's mild temperatures made it ideal for growing grapes, and its many days of sunshine made turning grapes into raisins simple and economical. 

Prior to Thompson's innovations, most raisins were sold with the seeds inside. They had to be laboriously "stoned," or cut open to remove the seeds. This was a time-consuming and labor-intensive task, usually reserved only for special occasions or the households of the wealthy. Thompson's seedless raisins removed all of that work, making it far easier to cook and bake with raisins. 

The introduction of this new type of raisin is probably why we see their proliferation as an ingredient in snickerdoodles, among other recipes. 

I decided to try a raisin-based snickerdoodle recipe myself. The F.W. McNess' Cook Book, published in the 1920s, is one from my personal library, and the first snickerdoodle recipe I initially found. McNess was a spice and flavoring company. So I decided to give it a go.

The McNess Cook Book page featuring the snickerdoodle recipe.

Snickerdoodles (with Raisins, 1920s)

Here's the original recipe, as written:

1 cup Light Brown Sugar,
1 Egg,
1/2 cup Chopped Raisins,
2 cups Flour
2 tablespoons Butter,
1/2 cup Milk,
2 teaspoons McNess Baking Powder
Sugar and McNess Cinnamon

Drop by spoonfuls and sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon. Nuts or cocoanut may be substituted for raisins.

Not many directions in that one! But I know the general rule for cookies. I creamed the sugar and butter together, added the egg, then the flour and baking powder, then the milk, and lastly currants, because I didn't have any raisins and was too lazy to chop them anyway. I dropped them onto a greased cookie sheet, dredged a mix of granulated sugar and ground cinnamon over top, and popped them in a 350 F oven for 10-12 minutes, until they were golden brown around the edges. 

Dropped by spoonfuls and sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar.

The finished cookies.

The end result? Not too shabby, but it definitely would have been better without the raisins/currants. They have more of a tea cake texture than a chewy sugar cookie. And sprinkling the cinnamon and sugar on top was not super effective. Perhaps bakers in the early 20th century were trying to be more old-fashioned? More in line with currant-based tea cakes or scones? Maybe they were just reveling in the opportunity to bake with raisins without having to spend an hour picking out all the seeds first? Who knows? 

At any rate, although I do enjoy raisins (and currants) quite a bit, I think it's safe to say that snickerdoodles are better off without them. What do you think? Would you eat snickerdoodles if they had raisins in them?

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