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Dessert

Ada's Sugar Cakes

A sweet cookie made with sugar, butter, eggs, baking soda, flour, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Ada's Sugar Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the dough

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

  2. In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the beaten eggs and mix well.

  4. Stir in the baking soda.

  5. Gradually add flour until the dough is firm enough to roll out.

Shape and bake

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

  2. Sprinkle with granulated sugar.

  3. Lightly roll with a rolling pin.

  4. Press a whole raisin in the center of each cookie.

  5. Bake until lightly browned.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Sugar
Sweetens the cookies and helps them brown and stay tender.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, moist texture.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness.
Flour
Provides the structure that lets the dough be rolled and cut.
Baking soda
Helps the cookies rise slightly and encourages browning.

The step that matters

Adding the flour gradually. Flour is added until the dough is just firm enough to roll. Too little leaves sticky dough that is hard to cut; too much makes the cookies dry and tough, because gluten and starch set the texture as flour is worked in.

“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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