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 ↓
Sugar 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.
Prepare the dough
Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.
Add the sour milk and baking soda, mixing well.
Gradually add flour until the dough is easy to roll.
Shape and bake
Roll the dough thin and cut into desired shapes.
Dust the cookies with sugar before baking.
Bake until lightly golden.
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.
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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Butter
- Creams with sugar to add fat, tenderness and a rich texture to the cookies.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the cookies and, creamed with butter, helps give a tender crumb.
- Sour milk
- Adds moisture and acidity to the dough.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the sour milk's acidity to produce gas that lightens the cookies and aids browning.
- Flour
- Provides structure and gives the dough enough body to roll and cut.
The step that matters
Adding the flour gradually. Adding flour gradually lets you stop once the dough is easy to roll. Too much flour makes cookies dry and tough, because flour proteins build gluten the more the dough is worked.
“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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