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Dessert

Pittsburg Cookies

A sweet cookie made with sugar, butter, sour cream, eggs, flour, baking soda, salt, nutmeg, and sprinkled with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Pittsburg 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the sour cream and eggs, mixing well.

  4. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, salt, and nutmeg.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until combined.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough very thin on a floured surface.

  2. Sprinkle a little sugar on top of the rolled dough.

  3. Cut into desired shapes and place on a baking sheet.

  4. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until lightly 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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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 adds richness and tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cookies and helps them brown lightly while baking.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and acidity that keep the cookies tender.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness.
Flour
Provides the main structure of the cookie dough.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour cream's acidity to lift and lighten the dough.

The step that matters

Roll the dough very thin. Thin dough bakes quickly and evenly, so the cookies turn crisp and lightly golden rather than thick and cakey. Thicker pieces stay soft in the middle and may need more time.

“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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