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Crisp Cookies

Crisp cookies made with butter, sugar, eggs, baking soda, cream of tartar, milk, nutmeg, cinnamon, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Crisp Cookies

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

  3. Add the beaten eggs, baking soda, cream of tartar, milk, nutmeg, and cinnamon; mix well.

  4. Gradually add flour until a soft dough forms.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into desired shapes.

  2. Brush the tops with a little milk and sprinkle with sugar.

  3. Bake in the preheated oven 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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with sugar to add richness and tenderness to the cookies.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the tops brown and crisp during baking.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure as they set in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to help the cookies rise and spread.
Cream of tartar
Provides acidity that activates the baking soda for lift and a tender crumb.
Flour
Builds the structure of the dough so it can be rolled and cut.

The step that matters

Adding the flour gradually. Adding flour slowly lets you stop once the dough is soft and rollable. Too much flour makes the cookies dry and tough, since gluten and starch set the texture.

“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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