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Pumpkin Cake Cookies with Brown Butter Icing

These are the fluffiest most cake-like cookies you’ll ever have. It’s like pumpkin pie and pumpkin bread had a delicious baby. Then they gave it a brown butter hat.

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Why it works: Butter and pumpkin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,931 recipes mention both. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

The recipe

Serves 36
Prep1 hr
Cook12 min

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe. See the full recipe at the source →

By tastykitchen. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Butter + pumpkintop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,931 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Ginger + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Cinnamon + pumpkintop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together1,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Flavor stand-ins for the ginger

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

  1. Cardamombetter flavor fit
  2. Allspiceabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Cloveabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, butter, sugar, egg, pumpkin. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).