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Dessert

Peanut Cookies

Peanut cookies are baked biscuits made with butter, sugar, egg, flour, baking powder, salt, and chopped peanuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Peanut 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. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the beaten egg and mix well.

  3. Sift together the flour, salt, and baking powder, then add to the mixture.

  4. Fold in the chopped peanuts.

Bake

  1. Roll the dough into small balls and place them an inch apart on a baking sheet.

  2. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes 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. 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. Flour + peanuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peanuttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,754 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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
Creams with sugar to give the cookies richness and a tender crumb.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds moisture and structure as it sets in the oven.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cookies as the dough sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cookies rise and lighten.
Peanuts
Add nutty flavour and texture throughout the dough.

The step that matters

Baking time. Baking for too long dries out and hardens the cookies, while too little time leaves them doughy. Watching for golden edges helps the centres set with a soft bite.

Swap the peanut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Macadamia nutfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peanutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, sugar, 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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