Why it works: Cream and butter 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 ↓
Egg 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.
Prepare the dough
In a bowl, combine 3 cups of flour, ½ teaspoon of baking soda, and 1 teaspoon of cream of tartar.
Cut in 1 cup of butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
In another bowl, beat 2 eggs with 1 cup of sugar until well combined.
Mix the egg and sugar mixture into the flour and butter mixture.
Bake
Roll out the dough thinly and bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.
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.
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Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour and butter 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
- Flour
- Forms the structure of the cookie as its proteins and starch set during baking.
- Butter
- Cut into the flour to add fat, tenderness and a crumbly texture.
- Eggs
- Bind the dough and add moisture and structure as they set.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the cookies and helps them brown as they bake.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to produce gas that helps the cookies rise.
- Cream of tartar
- Provides acidity that reacts with the baking soda to help leavening.
The step that matters
Rolling the dough thinly. Dough rolled too thick may stay doughy in the center before the outside browns. A thin, even sheet bakes through and turns golden evenly in a hot oven.
“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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