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Dessert

Sugar Cookies

A simple cookie made with butter, sugar, eggs, milk, flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, and baked after rolling.

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

Sugar Cookies

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Gradually add the sugar and mix well.

  3. Beat in the eggs until well combined.

  4. Stir in the milk.

  5. Sift the baking soda and cream of tartar with the flour, then add to the mixture.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough.

  2. Shape the dough.

  3. 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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Adds fat that makes the cookies rich and tender.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps it brown and stay tender.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and moisture.
Milk
Adds moisture so the dough comes together smoothly.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid to produce gas that helps the cookies rise.
Cream of tartar
Provides acidity that activates the baking soda and adds lightness.

The step that matters

Sift the baking soda and cream of tartar with the flour. Sifting spreads the leavening evenly through the flour so each cookie rises uniformly. Clumps of baking soda can leave bitter, soapy spots and uneven rise.

“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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