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Dessert

Cinnamon Cookies

A sweet cookie made with brown sugar, allspice, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, lemon, citron, eggs, and flour.

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 ↓

Cinnamon 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, mix together brown sugar, allspice, eggs, chopped citron, cinnamon, cloves, lemon zest, lemon juice, and ginger, then beat the mixture well until combined.

  2. Gradually add flour until the dough is thick enough to roll out.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough and form it into desired shapes.

  2. Place the cookies on greased baking pans.

  3. Brush the tops of the cookies with beaten egg and place a piece of citron in the center of each cookie.

  4. Bake in a preheated 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 + 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. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Brown sugar
Provides sweetness and moisture, and helps the cookies brown and stay soft.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure, moisture and richness.
Flour
Gives the dough body so it can be rolled out and hold its shape.
Ground cinnamon
Adds the warm, aromatic spice flavour that defines the cookie.
Chopped citron
Adds candied citrus flavour and chewy pieces throughout the dough.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, allspice, egg, cinnamon, clove, ginger, flour):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Orangefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, allspice, egg, cinnamon, clove, ginger, 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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