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Dessert

Sour Cream Seed Cookies

Cookies made with sour cream, butter, sugar, flour, egg, baking soda, and caraway seeds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and caraway match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,435 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sour Cream Seed Cookies

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Gradually add the sugar while stirring constantly.

  3. Mix in the well-beaten egg and sour cream.

  4. Sift the flour with the baking soda and add the caraway seeds.

  5. Combine the dry mixture with the wet mixture and beat until thoroughly blended.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the dough onto a buttered baking sheet, spacing them two inches apart.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) 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.

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. Flour + carawaytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to give the cookies a tender, rich body.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and mild acidity that keeps the cookies soft and tender.
Bread flour
Provides the protein-based structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour cream's acidity to help the cookies rise and brown.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds structure and richness.
Sugar
Sweetens the cookies and helps them brown as they bake.

The step that matters

Bake until golden. Baking is stopped by color rather than time alone, so the cookies stay soft in the centre. Taking them out once golden keeps them from drying and hardening as they cool.

Swap the caraway

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Carawaythe original

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