The first recorded recipes for oatmeal cookies appeared in America in the 1890s, at a time when industry was heavily promoting the recently invented
rolled oats. These early versions did not contain raisins. Food writer
Stella Parks does not give an exact date for the first rolled oatmeal cookie, but describes recipes for them close to their modern versions "[seeming] to multiply throughout the cookbooks of the 1890s". Cookbook author
Jean Anderson traces the earliest oatmeal cookie recipe to
Fannie Farmer's 1896 cookbook
The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book. By the 1910s, it was raisins that were being heavily marketed in America. Parks identifies
Souvenir California Raisin Recipe Book, a 1915 cookbook published by California-based raisin producers
Sun-Maid, as containing the first oatmeal raisin recipe. Noting that Sun-Maid and Quaker Oats both employed the same marketing firm, Parks speculates that the combination may have been an attempt to simultaneously serve multiple clients. Over the following decades, various cookbooks featured recipes for oatmeal raisin cookies. The low sugar and flour content may have contributed to the cookie's appeal in this period, which included wars and recession. == Variations ==