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Dessert

Plain Cookies

Cookies made with butter, milk, sugar, egg, flour, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Plain Cookies

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a rather 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 the butter in a bowl.

  2. Add the sugar and mix well.

  3. Beat in the egg, then gradually add the milk.

  4. Sift the baking powder into ½ cup of flour and add to the mixture.

  5. Continue adding flour a little at a time until the mixture leaves the sides of the bowl.

  6. Refrigerate the dough for at least 1 hour to stiffen.

Shape and bake

  1. Cut off small pieces of dough.

  2. Roll them out on a lightly floured surface.

  3. Cut into fancy shapes.

  4. Bake on greased baking sheets in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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
Creaming with sugar traps air and gives the cookies a tender, rich texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cookies brown as they bake.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds structure and richness.
Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cookies rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Adding flour gradually. Adding flour a little at a time lets you judge the dough's texture. Too much flour makes the cookies dry and tough, since gluten develops with handling and flour absorption.

“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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