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Dessert

None Such Cookies

A cookie made with butter, sugar, eggs, baking soda, flour, salt, walnuts, and minced meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

None Such Cookies

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Gradually add the sugar and mix well.

  3. Beat the eggs and add them to the mixture.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in hot water and add it to the bowl.

  5. Mix in ¾ of the flour combined with salt.

  6. Fold in the chopped walnuts and None Such Mince Meat.

  7. Add the remaining flour and mix until combined.

Bake and finish

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the dough onto a greased baking sheet, spacing them an inch or two apart.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

  3. Remove from the oven while still soft and cover before they cool completely.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Walnut + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,035 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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
Creams with sugar to create a tender, aerated base for the dough.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness to the cookies.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the dough to help the cookies rise and brown.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and aids browning and a soft texture.
None such mince meat
Adds sweetness, spice and moisture to the cookie dough.

The step that matters

Removing the cookies while still soft. Cookies continue to firm as they cool, so pulling them from the oven once golden but still soft prevents them from becoming dry and hard.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Pecansfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, flour, meat. 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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