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Dessert

Sugar Squares

A sweet dough made from sugar, lard, milk, ammonia, baking soda, and flour, baked into squares.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sugar Squares

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mix the sugar and lard together until well combined.

  2. Pound the ammonia very finely and add it to the mixture.

  3. Mix the baking soda into the milk and add it to the other ingredients.

  4. Add enough flour to stiffen the mixture.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough and cut it into squares.

  2. Place the squares into pans and bake as you would for molasses squares.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour 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

Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the squares brown and stay tender.
Lard
Fat that coats flour particles, making the squares tender and short in texture.
Milk
Supplies moisture that hydrates the flour and gives the dough its body.
Ammonia
Acts as a leavening agent, releasing gas that lightens the dough as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidic components to release carbon dioxide, helping the squares rise.
Flour
Provides structure, setting the dough once it is stiffened to a workable consistency.

The step that matters

Adding enough flour to stiffen the mixture. Flour proteins form gluten when worked, so adding too much flour or overworking the dough makes the squares dense, dry and tough.

“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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