Name: Eggless Cookies, No. 2
Ingredients: 1 cup sugar; ½ cup lard or butter; ½ cup sour milk; ½ teaspoon baking soda; Flour, enough to roll; Flavoring of your choice

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 ↓

Eggless Cookies, No. 2

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the dough

In a bowl, cream together the sugar and lard or butter.
Add the sour milk and baking soda, mixing well.
Gradually add flour until the dough is rollable.
Incorporate any flavoring you desire.

Shape and bake

Roll out the dough and cut into desired shapes.
Bake in the preheated oven until lightly 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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 create a tender, crisp texture when creamed with fat.
Lard or butter: Fat that creams with sugar to add tenderness and richness to the cookies.
Sour milk: Provides moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that helps the cookies rise and lighten.
Flour: Provides the structure that holds the dough together so it can be rolled and cut.

“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.