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Dessert

Grandmother's Cookies

A simple cookie made with butter, sugar, eggs, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Grandmother's Cookies

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the egg yolks and mix well.

  3. Stir in the flour until combined.

Fold in the whites

  1. Beat the egg whites with 1 teaspoon of sugar until stiff peaks form.

  2. Gently fold the egg whites into the batter.

Bake and store

  1. Drop the batter by teaspoonfuls onto greased baking pans.

  2. Bake until golden brown.

  3. Store cookies in a cake box to soften over a few days.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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
Adds fat and richness, giving the cookies tenderness and flavor.
Eggs
Yolks add richness and binding; whipped whites lighten the batter and add structure.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
White granulated sugar
Sweetens the cookies and helps them brown and crisp as they bake.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites hold air that lightens the batter. Stirring them vigorously deflates the foam, so fold gently until just combined to keep the cookies light.

“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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