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Dessert

Brown Sugar Cookies

A cookie made with brown sugar, butter, egg, baking soda, water, flour, and topped with a brown sugar icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Brown Sugar Cookies

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 ↓

Brown 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. 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.

Make the dough

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

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

  3. Beat in the egg.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in hot water and add it to the mixture.

  5. Gradually add flour until a soft dough forms.

  6. Drop spoonfuls of dough onto a baking sheet.

Bake and ice

  1. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until lightly browned.

  2. For the icing, boil the brown sugar, water, and butter together.

  3. Pour the hot mixture over the beaten egg white and stir until combined.

  4. Drizzle the icing over the cooled cookies.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and gives the cookies their caramel flavour.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness, and carries flavour through the dough.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds structure as the cookies set.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sugars and browns the cookies while helping them rise.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the soft dough together as it bakes.

The step that matters

Bake until lightly browned, not longer. Baking soda and brown sugar brown quickly, so over-baking dries the cookies and turns them hard. Pull them when the edges are just golden to keep them soft in the centre.

“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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