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Dessert

Currant Cookies

A sweet cookie made with eggs, sugar, butter, currants, cream, nutmeg or vanilla, baking powder, flour, and dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Currant Cookies

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 ↓

Currant Cookies

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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the dough

  1. Beat eggs and sugar in a large bowl until creamy.

  2. Add butter, currants, cream, and nutmeg or vanilla; mix well.

  3. Stir in baking powder and enough flour to form a dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out dough and cut into desired shapes.

  2. Dust cookies with powdered sugar before baking.

  3. Bake in preheated oven until 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.

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.

  1. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps it cream with the eggs and butter for a tender texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb in the baked cookies.
Currants
Provide chewy pockets of fruit flavour and sweetness throughout the dough.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cookies rise slightly and stay light.

The step that matters

Beat eggs and sugar until creamy. Beating air into the eggs and sugar creates a light base that helps the cookies rise and stay tender. Under-beating leaves a dense cookie.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, cream, nutmeg, flour. 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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