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Dessert

American Cookies

A simple cookie dough made with sugar, butter, milk, egg, flour, and baking powder, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

American Cookies

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine the sugar and melted butter, mixing well.

  2. Beat the egg and add the milk, then stir this mixture into the sugar and butter.

  3. Sift the baking powder with a little flour and stir it in, adding more flour until a stiff dough forms.

  4. Flour a surface, turn out the dough, knead it slightly, and roll it out to ½ inch thick.

Shape and bake

  1. Cut the dough with a biscuit cutter, dip each piece in sugar, and place them on a buttered baking sheet.

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

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 + 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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Egg
Binds the dough and adds richness and structure to the cookies.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the dough.
Flour
Provides the structure that makes the dough stiff enough to cut and hold its shape.
Baking powder
Produces gas that makes the cookies rise and lighten as they bake.
Sugar
Sweetens the cookies and helps them brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Adding flour until a stiff dough forms. Too little flour leaves a dough too soft to cut and roll, while too much makes the cookies dense and tough. Add flour gradually and stop once the dough holds its shape.

“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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