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Dessert

Christmas Cookies

A sweet cookie dough made with flour, sugar, butter, water, and baking soda, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter 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 ↓

Christmas 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

  1. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  2. Gradually add the flour and baking soda, mixing until well combined.

  3. Stir in the water until the dough comes together.

Shape and bake

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

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until lightly 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, crumbly texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, creamed with butter, helps give a light texture.
Baking soda
Acts as a leavener, helping the dough rise and spread slightly.

The step that matters

Mixing after the flour is added. Once flour is in, mixing develops gluten, which makes baked cookies firm and tough if overworked. Stop mixing as soon as the ingredients are well combined.

“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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