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Dessert

Butter Platzchen

A buttery lemon-flavored cookie topped with hazelnuts and dusted with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and hazelnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 205 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Butter Platzchen

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

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

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the lemon zest and mix well.

Shape and bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

  2. Sprinkle chopped hazelnuts on top of each cookie.

  3. Dust with sugar before baking.

  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. Lemon + hazelnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together205 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  2. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Butter + hazelnuttop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together559 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Creams with sugar to trap air, giving the cookies a light, tender crumb and rich flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the cookies and, creamed with butter, helps create a light, fluffy texture.
Lemon zest
Adds bright aromatic citrus flavor that lifts the rich butter.

The step that matters

Bake for 10-12 minutes or until lightly golden. Cookies can over-brown quickly because sugar caramelizes and browns at higher heat. Pulling them when just lightly golden keeps them tender and prevents bitterness.

Swap the hazelnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Chickpeafits about as well
  4. Hazelnutthe original

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

“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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