Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓
Buttermilk Drop 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.
Prepare
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.
Add the buttermilk, baking soda, eggs, nutmeg, and lemon juice; mix well.
Gradually add flour until the batter is thick enough to drop from a spoon.
Bake
Drop spoonfuls of batter onto greased baking sheets.
Place a raisin in the center of each cookie.
Bake until golden brown.
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.
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Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together11,318 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
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Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together18,623 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,721 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Sugar + buttermilktop 9% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together2,973 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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
- Sugar
- Sweetens the dough and helps it brown while creaming with butter.
- Butter
- Adds fat and richness, and creaming it with sugar traps air for a tender texture.
- Buttermilk
- Adds moisture and acidity that tenderizes the dough and reacts with the baking soda.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to produce gas that helps the cookies rise.
- Eggs
- Bind the dough and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
- Flour
- Provides the structure that sets the cookies and gives the batter its drop-spoon thickness.
The step that matters
Adding the flour. Flour should be added gradually until the batter is thick enough to hold its shape. Too much flour makes cookies dry and dense, while too little makes them spread thin.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, buttermilk, egg, nutmeg, flour):
- Raisinfits better
- Vanillafits about as well
- Lemonthe original
- Figfits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, buttermilk, egg, nutmeg, 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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