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Dessert

Chocolate Cookies

A simple chocolate cookie made with butter, lard, brown sugar, milk, flour, salt, baking powder, and chocolate squares.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Chocolate Cookies

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 ↓

Chocolate Cookies

Ingredients

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.

Make the dough

  1. Cream the butter and lard with the brown sugar.

  2. Add the unbeaten egg and beat thoroughly.

  3. Stir in the melted chocolate and mix well.

  4. Add the milk and combine.

  5. Sift in the flour, salt, and baking powder, and mix until smooth.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough to ½ inch thick and cut with cookie cutters.

  2. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until done.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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 and lard
Fat that creams with sugar to trap air and give the cookies a tender texture.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cookies brown during baking.
Milk
Adds moisture that hydrates the flour and keeps the dough workable.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough so the cookies rise and lighten.
Chocolate
Supplies the chocolate flavour and richness throughout the dough.

The step that matters

Mixing in the flour. Once flour is added, overmixing develops too much gluten, which makes cookies tough and dense. Mix only until the dough is smooth.

“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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