Name: Pecan Cookies
Ingredients: 1 cup pecan nuts, finely chopped; 2 tablespoons butter, softened; ¼ cup sugar; 1 egg; 2 tablespoons milk; 1 tablespoon lemon juice; ½ cup flour; 1 teaspoon baking powder; Additional flour as needed

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 ↓

Pecan Cookies

Ingredients

Directions

Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl.
Beat the egg until light and add it to the butter mixture.
Stir in the milk and lemon juice.
In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking powder.
Add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients, mixing until combined.
Fold in the chopped pecans and enough additional flour to form a stiff drop batter.
Drop spoonfuls of the batter onto a buttered baking sheet.

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Nuts + flourtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,180 recipes

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

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, egg, milk, lemon, flour):

Almondfits better
Pistachiofits better
Milletfits better
Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, milk, lemon, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.