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Grandma Cookies

A sweet cookie made with sugar, lard, eggs, ammonia, baking soda, glucose, water, mace, lemon, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Grandma 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.

Make the dough

  1. Combine sugar and lard in a large mixing bowl until well blended.

  2. Add eggs and mix thoroughly.

  3. Dissolve ammonia in a small amount of water and add to the mixture.

  4. Stir in baking soda, glucose, mace, and lemon.

  5. Gradually add flour until a dough forms.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into cookies and place on baking sheets.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) 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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Mace + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,315 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cookies brown and crisp at the edges.
Lard
Provides fat for tenderness and richness in the dough.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add moisture and structure to the cookies.
Baking soda
Reacts to lift the dough and promote browning in the oven.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.

The step that matters

Dissolving the ammonia. Ammonia is a leavening agent that releases gas as it breaks down, so it must be fully dissolved in water before mixing to spread evenly and avoid pockets or uneven rising in the dough.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, lemon, flour):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, lemon, 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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