Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Sugar 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.
Make the dough
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a bowl, cream together the sugar, butter, and lard.
Add the egg and sour milk, mixing well.
Sift the baking soda with the flour and gradually add it to the mixture until a dough forms.
Season the dough with nutmeg to taste.
Shape and bake
Roll out the dough and cut into cookie shapes.
Place a split raisin on top of each cookie and sprinkle with sugar.
Leave space between each cookie on the baking sheet.
Bake until golden.
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.
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Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together9,075 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,377 recipes
Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).
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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together18,623 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 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
- Sugar
- Sweetens the dough and helps the cookies brown at the edges.
- Butter and lard
- Adds fat for tenderness and a rich texture in the dough.
- Egg
- Binds the dough and adds structure and richness.
- Sour milk
- Adds moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acidic sour milk to make the cookies rise and spread.
- Flour
- Provides the structure that sets the dough into cookie shapes.
The step that matters
Add the baking soda with the flour. Baking soda needs an acid, here the sour milk, to react and leaven the dough. Sifting it evenly through the flour prevents pockets of soda, which can leave bitter or yellow spots in the baked cookies.
Swap the nutmeg
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, egg, milk, flour, raisin):
- Cinnamonfits better
- Nutmegthe original
- Capersfits less well
- Jalapenofits less well
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, milk, flour, raisin. 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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