Name: Scotch Cookies
Ingredients: ½ cup molasses; 1½ cups sugar; 1¼ cups butter (or ½ butter and ½ lard); 2 eggs; 1 teaspoon baking soda; 1 teaspoon ground cloves; 1 teaspoon ground allspice; 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon; Flour (for rolling)

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Scotch 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.

Make the dough

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
In a bowl, mix molasses, sugar, butter, and eggs until well combined.
Add baking soda, cloves, allspice, cinnamon, and enough flour to form a dough.
Roll the dough thin.
Cut into shapes.

Bake

Place on a baking sheet.
Bake until lightly golden.

Glaze and finish

Use 2½ pounds of sugar, 1¼ cups of butter, 3 cups of flour, and 5 eggs, along with ½ pint of molasses and 1 ounce of baking soda.
Roll very thin.
Cut with a cake cutter.
Space them on a pan.
Brush the tops with a glaze made from the yolk of an egg mixed with an equal amount of water and ¼ teaspoon of sugar, halfway through baking.

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.

Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,536 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,341 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Molasses: Adds moisture, sweetness and deep color to the cookies.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the cookies brown during baking.
Butter: Adds fat that gives the cookies a tender, rich texture.
Eggs: Bind the dough together and add structure.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acidic molasses to lift the dough and aid browning.

The step that matters

Roll the dough thin. Thin dough bakes through and turns crisp; thicker dough stays soft and cakey in the middle and may not brown evenly.

Swap the clove

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

Nutmegfits better
Clovethe original
Cardamomfits less well
Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, sugar, butter, egg, allspice, cinnamon, 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.