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Dessert

Ammonia Cookies

Cookies made with sugar, butter, eggs, baking ammonia, sweet cream, and flour, 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 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 ↓

Ammonia 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Dissolve the baking ammonia in the sweet cream.

  3. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  4. Add the eggs and mix well.

  5. Stir in the dissolved baking ammonia.

  6. Gradually add flour until the dough is easy to roll out.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough thin and cut into desired shapes.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

Baking ammonia
Releases gas as it breaks down, helping the cookies rise and turn light and crisp.
Butter
Adds fat that creams with the sugar, giving tenderness and a rich flavor.
Sugar
Creams with the butter and aids browning, adding sweetness and a crisp edge.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add moisture and structure as they set in the oven.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the shapes once the dough is rolled and cut.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking ammonia fully in the sweet cream. Undissolved baking ammonia can leave gritty pockets or uneven rising, so dissolving it first lets the leavening spread evenly through the dough.

“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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