Name: Lemon Cookies
Ingredients: 2 eggs; ½ cup butter; 1 cup water or milk; 1 cup sugar; 1 teaspoon lemon juice; 2 teaspoons baking powder; a little nutmeg; sugar for sprinkling; almonds (optional)

Why it works: Nutmeg and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,115 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Lemon Cookies

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a bowl, cream the butter and sugar together.
Add the eggs, water or milk, and lemon juice; mix well.
In another bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, nutmeg, and mix into the wet ingredients until soft.
Roll the dough thin and cut into desired shapes.
Place on a baking sheet, sprinkle sugar on top, and add almonds if using.
Bake for 10-12 minutes or 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.

Nutmeg + almondtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,115 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,655 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the almond

The recipe marks almond as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, milk, sugar, lemon, nutmeg):

Almondthe original
Pistachiofits about as well
Walnutfits less well
Milletfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, milk, sugar, lemon, nutmeg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.