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Dessert

Mary Haisman

A recipe for sugar cookies made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, baking powder, vanilla, and optional nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Paidar, Marie, Mrs., [from old catalog] comp · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 19,187 recipes mention both. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Mary Haisman

Ingredients

Directions

Make the first dough

  1. Combine one scant cup butter, one level cup sugar, two eggs, one tablespoon water, one teaspoon vanilla, one teaspoon baking powder, and enough flour to make a dough to roll out thin.

  2. Cream butter and sugar thoroughly.

  3. Beat eggs until very light, add to creamed butter and sugar, beat well, then add water and vanilla.

  4. To one-half cup of sifted pastry flour add baking powder and sift into other ingredients.

  5. Beat until light, then add enough flour to make soft dough, about two level cups.

Roll, cut and bake

  1. Turn out on floured board, knead lightly, roll out very thin, cut out with cookie cutter and bake in a quick oven about ten minutes.

Make the second dough

  1. Combine two tablespoons butter, two cups sugar, two eggs, one cup sour cream, one-half teaspoon soda, four cups flour, and flavor with nutmeg.

  2. Cream butter, add sugar, add eggs, mix well and add the rest of the ingredients, the soda dissolved in the sour cream.

  3. Toss on floured board, roll out thin and cut.

  4. Bake in shallow buttered pans in hot oven about ten minutes.

Make the third dough

  1. Cream one tablespoon butter and one cup of lard with one and one-half cups sugar.

  2. Add two eggs, beat again.

  3. Add one-half cup milk, two teaspoons baking powder sifted with one cup flour, nutmeg grated to flavor, and enough flour to make dough stiff enough to roll out.

By Paidar, Marie, Mrs., [from old catalog] comp. 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. See the original page.

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. Vanilla + milktop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Vanilla and sugar share little aroma chemistry, yet 35,032 recipes mention both: they likely 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
Adds richness and tenderness, and helps the dough cream and hold its shape.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness to the cookies.
Baking powder
Produces lift so the cookies rise lightly in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the cookies and helps them brown during baking.
Sour cream
Adds acidity and moisture, and reacts with the soda to help the cookies rise.

The step that matters

Roll out very thin. Rolling the dough thin keeps the cookies crisp. Thick dough bakes soft and puffy, and it can spread or brown unevenly.

Flavor stand-ins for the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonbetter flavor fit
  2. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vanilla, flour, butter, sugar, cream, milk, egg. 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).

“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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