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Dessert

Sour Cream Drop Cookies

A simple drop cookie made with sour cream, sugar, egg, flour, baking soda, salt, and optional raisins or nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 ↓

Sour Cream 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

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

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix together the sour cream, sugar, and egg until well combined.

  2. Gradually add the flour, baking soda, and salt, mixing until a dough forms.

Shape and bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the dough onto a buttered baking pan.

  2. Pat each cookie down slightly and sprinkle sugar on top.

  3. If desired, place a nut meat or raisin in the center of each cookie.

  4. 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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

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

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Sour cream
Adds moisture and acidity, giving the cookies a soft, tender crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together and sets as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour cream's acidity to produce gas that helps the cookies rise.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds structure and richness.
Sugar
Sweetens the cookies and helps them brown at the surface as they bake.

The step that matters

Gradually add the flour, baking soda, and salt. Adding dry ingredients gradually and mixing only until a dough forms keeps the batter from being overworked. Overmixing develops gluten, which can make the cookies tough rather than tender.

“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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