Skip to main content
Dessert

New Year's Cookies

Cookies made with sugar, butter, eggs, nutmeg, lemon extract, flour, baking soda, milk, and cider.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

New Year's Cookies

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  2. Add the beaten eggs, grated nutmeg, and lemon extract; mix well.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in the milk, then strain and mix it with the cider.

  4. Stir the milk and cider mixture into the cookie batter.

  5. Add enough flour to make the dough stiff enough to roll out.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into shapes.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until light brown.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to give the cookies richness, tenderness and a fine crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and binding so the dough holds its shape when cut.
All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure that lets the dough be rolled and cut.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cider and milk to produce gas that lightens the cookies.
Sugar
Sweetens the cookies and helps them brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Add enough flour to make the dough stiff enough to roll out. Too little flour leaves the dough sticky and hard to cut, while too much makes cookies tough and dry. Add it gradually until the dough is firm enough to roll.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, egg, nutmeg, flour, milk, cider):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, nutmeg, flour, milk, cider. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes