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Dessert

Christmas Cookies No. 3

A simple sugar and lard cookie flavored with baking soda, cream of tartar, and optional flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Christmas Cookies No. 3

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.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

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

  3. Add the eggs and mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the baking soda and cream of tartar.

  5. Add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, alternating with boiling water.

  6. Flavor the mixture to your taste.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of dough onto a baking sheet.

  2. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until lightly 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the dough and, creamed with lard, helps give the cookies a tender texture.
Lard
Adds fat that creams with sugar to create a tender, short crumb.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and moisture to the cookies.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to release gas, helping the cookies rise and spread.
Cream of tartar
Provides acidity that activates the baking soda, aiding rise and browning.

The step that matters

Alternating dry ingredients with boiling water. Adding the leavening mix and boiling water in turns keeps the dough evenly moistened and blended. Overmixing after the flour-type ingredients are added can toughen the cookies, so stir just until combined.

“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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