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Dessert

Vanilla Cookies

A simple cookie made with butter, sugar, milk, baking soda, vanilla, cream of tartar, flour, and sprinkled with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Vanilla Cookies

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the milk, baking soda, vanilla, and cream of tartar; mix well.

  3. Gradually add flour until the dough is soft and manageable.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough and sprinkle sugar on top.

  2. Cut into desired shapes and bake.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Creams with sugar to add richness and a tender, short texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cookies and, creamed with butter, helps give a tender crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the dough to produce gas that helps the cookies rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidic ingredient that works with baking soda to leaven the dough and balance sweetness.
Milk
Adds moisture so the flour can form a soft, workable dough.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until the dough is soft and manageable. Adding too much flour at once or past the point of softness makes the dough stiff and dense, producing tough cookies. Adding it gradually lets you stop once the dough is workable.

“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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