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Dessert

Favorite Cookies

Cookies made with butter, sugar, sour milk, baking soda, nutmeg, flour, and dipped in fine sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Favorite Cookies

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

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 sour milk, baking soda, and nutmeg; mix well.

  4. Gradually add flour until the dough is soft but manageable.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into shapes.

  2. Dip the tops of each cookie in fine sugar.

  3. Place on buttered baking sheets and bake until light brown.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Adds fat that keeps the cookies tender and helps them brown.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and, creamed with butter, helps give a light texture.
Sour milk
Adds acidity and moisture to the dough.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to lift the dough and promote browning.
Flour
Provides the structure that lets the dough be rolled and cut into shapes.

The step that matters

Add the flour gradually. Flour develops gluten as it is worked in, so adding it gradually and stopping once the dough is soft but manageable keeps the cookies tender rather than tough.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, milk, flour. 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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