Name: Plain Cookies
Ingredients: 2 teaspoons Star Crystal Baking Powder; 2 cups flour; ½ cup milk; 2 teaspoons caraway seeds

Why it works: Flour and caraway match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,435 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Plain Cookies

Ingredients

2 teaspoons Star Crystal Baking Powder
2 cups flour
½ cup milk
2 teaspoons caraway seeds

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
In a bowl, combine the flour and baking powder.

Make and bake

Add the milk and caraway seeds to the mixture, then mix until a dough forms.
Drop spoonfuls of dough onto a baking sheet.
Bake until golden 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.

Flour + carawaytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,435 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + carawaytop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together647 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Baking powder: Releases gas in the dough so the cookies rise and turn light rather than dense.
Flour: Provides the structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Milk: Adds moisture to hydrate the flour and form a soft, cohesive dough.