Name: Almond Cookies
Ingredients: ½ pound butter; ½ pound sugar; 1¼ pounds flour (or ½ cup corn starch); 1 teaspoon baking powder; 2 eggs; almond extract; milk; chopped almonds; fine sugar

Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Almond Cookies

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the dough

Cream together the butter and sugar.
Add flour, baking powder, eggs, and almond extract; mix into a smooth dough.
Roll out the dough to ¼ inch thick.
Cut into desired shapes.

Decorate and bake

Brush the cut cookies with a little water.
Sprinkle with chopped almonds and sift fine sugar over them.
Bake until lightly golden.

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.

Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,673 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,245 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 the sugar to give the cookies a tender, rich texture.
Sugar: Sweetens the cookies and helps create a tender crumb when creamed with butter.
Flour: Forms the structure of the dough that holds the cut shapes.
Baking powder: Releases gas during baking to lighten the cookies.
Eggs: Bind the dough and add richness and 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.