Peanut Cookies (1924)
Reader ratingsPeanut cookies from a Woman’s World summer menu of 1924, served with coffee and fruit punch: small drops of butter, sugar and chopped raw peanuts, sharpened with lemon juice.
- Recipe makes
- About 60 small cookies
- Prep
- Cook
- Total
Set the butter out to soften for 30 minutes first. The cookies bake in batches of about 10 minutes; shape the next sheet while one bakes.
Peanut cookies with a cup of fruit punch.
The story behind the recipe
A summer Sunday menu of 1924 put these on the table: small drop cookies, soft and cakey, studded with chopped peanuts and lifted with a spoonful of lemon juice. The recipe comes from The Woman’s World Book of Fifty-two Sunday Dinners, published in Chicago in 1924 from menus the magazine said it chose “from among the choicest dinners of practical housekeepers in every section of the United States.” It doesn’t name the household it came from.
A summer Sunday table
The cookies belong to the book’s thirty-fifth menu, a cold summer spread printed under a picture of bathers in the surf: ham sandwiches, grated cheese sandwiches, fruit salad with pineapple mayonnaise, spice layer cake, peanut cookies, stuffed dates, olives, salted nuts and homemade candy. To drink there was hot coffee and cold fruit punch: pineapple, lemon and ice water, with a berry or two in each cup. Across its 52 menus the drinks run to coffee, iced tea, lemonade, grape juice, sweet cider and punch.
Read more about this recipe
Making it today
The book calls for raw peanuts, which stay pale in a cookie that bakes this fast. Shelled raw peanuts are sold in natural food shops; rub off the red skins if they are on, as the same menu does for its salted nuts. Unsalted roasted peanuts work too. Mrs. Wilson’s cook book of 1920 puts a hot oven at 425 to 450°F (220 to 230°C); for cookies this small and soft we bake at 400°F (200°C) and check them at 8 minutes.
The 1924 menu sets them beside a cold fruit punch; the other books of the dry years are in What Did Americans Cook When the Bars Closed in 1920?, which ends its table with Stockbridge’s Hot Fudge Sundae (1920). For a punch to go with them, Forgotten Drink has a ginger ale punch from 1920 (opens in a new tab).
Beat together until creamy ½ cup each butter and sugar, beat with the mixture 2 eggs. Add 1 cup chopped raw peanuts, tablespoon lemon juice. Sift with 2 cups flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, pinch of salt, add to first mixture with ½ cup milk. Drop by teaspoonfuls on greased paper, bake from 8 to 10 minutes in hot oven.
Recipe makes: About 60 small cookies
Ingredients
For about 60 small cookies. Quantities are shown as written.
Quantities as written here, for about 60 small cookies.
- Unsalted butter, softened1/2 cup
- Sugar1/2 cup
- Large eggs2
- Raw shelled peanuts, skinned and chopped1 cup
- Lemon juice1 tbsp
- All-purpose flour2 cups
- Baking powder2 tsp
- Salt1 pinch
- Whole milk1/2 cup
Measurement notes
Ingredients as written here
- ½ cup unsalted butter, softened
- ½ cup sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 1 cup raw shelled peanuts, skinned and chopped
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1 pinch salt
- ½ cup whole milk
Equipment
- Large mixing bowl
- Wooden spoon or hand mixer
- Sifter or fine sieve
- 2 baking sheets lined with parchment paper, lightly greased
- Wire rack
Instructions
Heat the oven to 400°F (200°C) and line the baking sheets with lightly greased parchment.
Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy. Beat in the eggs one at a time.
Stir in the peanuts and the lemon juice.
Sift the flour, baking powder and salt together. Add them to the butter mixture in three parts, alternating with the milk in two, and stir just until the dough is smooth.
Drop rounded teaspoons of dough onto the paper, about 1½ inches apart.
Bake one sheet at a time for 8 to 10 minutes, until the cookies are puffed and set and their edges are golden. Cool on the rack, and bake the rest the same way.
Nutrition
55calories per serving
- Recipe makes
- About 60 small cookies
- Servings
- 60
Estimated per cookie from USDA FoodData Central values for the listed ingredients.
Recipe notes
When adjusting quantities
A rounded teaspoon of dough makes each cookie.
Notes
Quantities mentioned in these notes don’t change when you adjust the servings.
The cookies keep for 4 or 5 days in a tin. They bake up soft; for a flatter, crisper cookie, press each mound flat with a wet fork before baking. Contains peanuts, milk, egg and wheat.
Scaling changes the ingredients only; pan sizes and cooking times need their own judgment. To adapt this recipe further, try the recipe tool at TuneMyRecipe (opens in a new tab), our sister site.
Sources and attribution
After The Woman’s World Book of Fifty-two Sunday Dinners (Chicago: Woman’s World Magazine Co., 1924), Peanut Cookies
Recipe details
- Course
- Dessert
- Dish family
- Desserts & Sweets
- Region
- American
- Era
- Interwar
- Source decade
- 1920s
- Event
- Prohibition, 1920
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Season
- Summer