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Dessert

Cookies Without Eggs

Cookies made without eggs, using lard, sugar, sour milk, baking soda, flour, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cookies Without Eggs

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the lard and sugar until well combined.

  3. Add the sour milk and baking soda, mixing thoroughly.

  4. Gradually add flour until the dough is stiff enough to roll.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough thin and cut into desired shapes.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven until 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.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Lard
Provides fat that tenderises the cookies and gives a rich texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cookies brown during baking.
Sour milk
Supplies acidity and moisture that give the dough a soft, tender crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk's acid to produce gas that lightens the cookies.
Flour
Forms the structure that makes the dough stiff enough to roll and cut.

The step that matters

Adding the flour gradually. Too much flour makes the dough tough and dry, while too little leaves it too soft to roll and cut cleanly. Adding it in stages lets you stop once the dough reaches a rollable stiffness.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

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