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Dessert

Cream Cookies

Cream Cookies are sweet biscuits made with sugar, butter, eggs, milk, flour, baking powder, salt, topped with almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Cream Cookies

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and milk, mixing well.

  3. Sift the baking powder and salt into the flour, then mix the flour into the creamed mixture.

  4. Lightly flour a surface and roll out the dough thinly.

Shape and bake

  1. Cut into small shapes and brush the tops with egg white.

  2. Place half an almond on each cookie.

  3. Bake on oiled paper in a 400°F (200°C) 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 + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 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 richness and a tender texture.
Granulated sugar
Creams with the butter and adds sweetness and browning.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness.
All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the dough.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cookies rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Roll out the dough thinly. Thin, even dough bakes through at the same rate, so the cookies turn golden and crisp rather than thick, pale, or unevenly cooked. Lightly flouring the surface keeps the dough from sticking without making it dry.

“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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