for any loop _ want to know which matches

[scidam]

Another way is to use regular expressions:

import re
#output1, output2=[],[]
preset=r"cookie\."
list1=['cookie.A001', 'cookie.H004', 'cookie.H004 andsomeothertext', 'cookie.ABC031', 'cookie.FAIL002']
list2=['A', 'H', 'ABC']
#list2_total=[preset+x for x in list2] 
list2_pats = map(lambda x: re.compile(preset + r'(%s)([0-9]+)' % x), list2)
result = sum([pat.findall(item) for pat in list2_pats for item in list1], [])
output1, output2 = zip(*result)
print(output1)
print(output2)

There is no problem with A/ABC matching if xxxx in cookie.Axxxx (cookie.ABCxxxx) are digits.