Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
Cream 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.
Prepare the dough
Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.
Add the eggs and sour cream, mixing well.
Stir in the baking soda and lemon extract or nutmeg.
Gradually add flour until the dough is soft enough to roll.
Shape and bake
Roll out the dough and cut into desired shapes.
Place on a baking sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes or until lightly golden.
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.
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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 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 the sugar to trap air, giving the cookies a light, tender texture.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the cookies and, creamed with butter, helps create a light structure.
- Eggs
- Bind the dough and add structure and richness to the cookies.
- Sour cream
- Adds moisture and acidity, keeping the cookies soft and tender.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the sour cream's acidity to produce gas, helping the cookies rise and brown.
- Flour
- Provides the structure that holds the dough together so it can be rolled and cut.
The step that matters
Gradually add flour until the dough is soft enough to roll. Adding too much flour makes the dough dry and tough, while too little leaves it sticky and hard to shape. Adding it gradually lets you stop once the dough is soft and rollable.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, butter, cream, flour):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Coconutfits about as well
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, butter, cream, flour. 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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