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Dessert

Plain Chocolate Cookie

A simple chocolate cookie made with powdered sugar, butter, milk, ammonia, flour, and grated chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Plain Chocolate Cookie

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.

Make the dough

  1. Dissolve the powdered sugar and ammonia in the milk.

  2. In a bowl, rub the flour and butter together until it resembles pie crust.

  3. Mix the grated chocolate into the flour and butter mixture before adding the milk.

Shape and bake

  1. Cut the dough with a star cutter and place on a baking sheet.

  2. Bake the cookies in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until done.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  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

Flour
Forms the structure of the cookies as its proteins and starch set in the oven.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to give a short, crumbly, tender texture.
Milk
Adds moisture that brings the dough together.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves easily into the milk, adding sweetness and helping the cookies brown.
Grated chocolate
Adds chocolate flavor and color throughout the dough.
Ammonia
Acts as a leavener, releasing gas in the oven to lighten the cookies.

The step that matters

Rubbing the butter into the flour. Rubbing should stop once the mixture looks like pie crust. Overworking the dough warms the butter and develops gluten, which makes cookies tough and spreads them unevenly.

“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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