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Dessert

Honey Cookies

Honey cookies made with honey, sugar, flour, eggs, spices, baking soda, optional nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Honey Cookies

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Boil honey for a few minutes, then remove from heat.

  2. While still hot, stir in sugar and flour.

  3. When the mixture is lukewarm, add the beaten eggs and knead thoroughly.

  4. Set the dough aside until the next day.

  5. Dissolve baking soda in hot water.

  6. Add allspice, cinnamon, and cloves. Work the mixture well.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll it out.

  2. Cut into shapes.

  3. Bake.

  4. Optionally, add chopped nuts for improved flavor.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Honey + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,446 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

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

What each ingredient does

Honey
Provides sweetness and moisture, and keeps the cookies soft and chewy.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness.
Flour
Forms the structure of the dough as it sets in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the honey and spices to help the cookies rise and brown.

The step that matters

Resting the dough until the next day. Resting lets the flour fully hydrate and the spices and honey blend, which firms the dough so it can be rolled and cut cleanly.

Swap the nuts

The recipe marks nuts as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (honey, sugar, flour, egg, allspice, cinnamon, clove):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against honey, sugar, flour, egg, allspice, cinnamon, clove. 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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