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Bread

Aunt Emily's Cookies

A cookie dough made with brown sugar, sour milk, butter, cinnamon, baking soda, white sugar, eggs, flour, sweet milk, and cream of tartar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Aunt Emily's Cookies

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix together brown sugar, sour milk, butter, cinnamon, and baking soda until well combined.

  2. Add white sugar and eggs, mixing until smooth.

  3. Gradually add flour until the mixture is a thick batter.

Shape and bake

  1. Flour a breadboard generously and roll out the dough to a thick consistency.

  2. Cut into desired shapes and place on a baking sheet.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cookies together as they set.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness to the cookies.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavor in the cookies.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to help the cookies rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that lightens the dough.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cookies brown.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until the mixture is a thick batter. Flour is added in stages so the dough does not take up too much at once. Too much flour makes cookies dry and tough, while too little leaves them soft and spreading.

Swap the cinnamon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, milk, butter, egg, flour, cream):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonthe original
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Jalapenofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, butter, egg, flour, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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