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Dessert

Lemon Snaps

A sweet biscuit made with butter, sugar, flour, lemon rind and juice, and baking powder, rolled and cut into small cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Des Moines. Plymouth church. [from old catalog] · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
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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 ↓

Lemon Snaps

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Combine one cup butter, two cups sugar, four teaspoons water, one and a half teaspoons baking powder, rind and juice of one lemon, and flour sufficient to roll.

  2. Combine five cups flour, two cups sugar, one cup butter, two eggs, half cup sweet milk, and two teaspoons baking powder. Flavor with caraway seed, lemon or nutmeg. Mix ingredients together and work in flour until it rolls nicely.

Shape and bake

  1. After they are cut out, put on a white surface and sprinkle with sugar.

  2. Combine two cups pulverized sugar, one and a third cups butter, four eggs (yolks and whites beaten separately), one teaspoon soda dissolved in two tablespoons sweet milk, and flour sufficient to roll out soft. Sprinkle white sugar over them before putting into the oven.

  3. Combine one cup butter, three-fourths cup sweet milk, three cups sugar, four eggs, and three teaspoons baking powder. Mix very soft, roll and cut out. Drop each cake bottom side up onto a plate of coffee sugar, and immediately transfer to the baking pan. Bake in a moderately quick oven.

  4. Combine three-fourths pound butter, three-fourths pound sugar, four eggs, one nutmeg, and a fourth pound flour. Roll in fine sugar and flour mixture and bake in a quick oven.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

845Calories
28 gProtein
27 gFat
121 gCarbs

Counts 6 of 7 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 6 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12
Waternot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Des Moines. Plymouth church. [from old catalog]. 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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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
Adds richness and tenderness, keeping the cookies short and crisp.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness to the cookies.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven so the cookies rise and lighten.
Sugar
Sweetens the cookies and helps them brown and crisp at the edges.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together.

The step that matters

Rolling and baking the dough at the right consistency. Dough worked too stiff makes tough cookies, while dough kept too soft spreads and loses its shape in the oven. Baking in a quick oven sets the edges before they spread.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

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