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Dessert

Lemon Cookies

Lemon cookies made with flour, butter, sugar, lemon juice, lemon peel, eggs, baking soda, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Lemon 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 the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the dough

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

  2. Add the lemon juice and grated lemon peel, mixing well.

  3. In a separate bowl, whip the eggs until light and frothy, then add to the mixture.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in the milk and add it to the dough.

  5. Gradually add the flour until a stiff dough forms.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough on a floured surface and cut into desired shapes.

  2. Place on a baking sheet and bake until light 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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
Creams with sugar to trap air and give the cookies a tender, rich texture.
Sugar
Creamed with butter to add sweetness and help the cookies brown.
Eggs
Whipped and added to bind the dough and add structure and richness.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that sets the stiff dough as the cookies bake.
Baking soda
Reacts to lift the dough slightly and promote light browning in the oven.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavor to the dough.

The step that matters

Gradually add the flour until a stiff dough forms. Adding flour gradually lets you stop when the dough is stiff enough to roll. Too much flour makes cookies dry and tough, while too little leaves the dough sticky and hard to cut.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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