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Dessert

Hard Boiled Egg Cookies

Cookies made from hard boiled egg yolks, butter, sugar, flour, cinnamon, lemon rind, and almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Hard Boiled Egg Cookies

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Mash the yolks of the hard boiled eggs.

  2. Add sugar, butter, and the raw egg; cream well.

  3. Mix in flour, cinnamon, and lemon rind.

  4. Let the dough stand in a cold place overnight.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough to ¼ inch thick.

  2. Brush with beaten egg and sprinkle with chopped almonds mixed with a little sugar.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until 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.

  1. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Hard boiled egg yolks
Add richness and a tender, crumbly texture to the dough.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavor in the cookie.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cookie together as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the cookies brown as they bake.
Raw egg
Binds the dough and helps it hold together when rolled and baked.

The step that matters

Let the dough stand in a cold place overnight. Chilling firms the butter so the dough holds its shape and rolls cleanly, and gives the flour time to hydrate, which improves texture after baking.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, sugar, flour, cinnamon, almond):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, sugar, flour, cinnamon, almond. 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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