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Baking

Spice Cookies

A sweet cookie made with butter, sugar, egg yolks, nutmeg, cloves, flour, and topped with sugar, cinnamon, and a fruit or nut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Spice Cookies

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Spice Cookies

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until smooth.

  2. Stir in the beaten yolks of the eggs and mix well.

  3. Add the nutmeg and cloves, and combine thoroughly.

  4. Gradually beat in the egg whites and flour sifted with baking powder until the dough is stiff enough to roll out.

  5. Roll out the dough and cut into round shapes.

Decorate and bake

  1. Sprinkle granulated sugar mixed with a little cinnamon on top of each cookie.

  2. Place a currant, blanched almond, or raisin in the center of each cookie.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 trap air and give the cookies a tender, rich texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cookies and helps them brown as they bake.
Egg yolks
Add richness and moisture, and help bind the dough.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that lets the dough hold its cut shapes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough so the cookies rise and turn lighter.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the dough.

The step that matters

Gradually beat in the flour until the dough is just stiff enough to roll out. Flour develops gluten as it is mixed. Overmixing once the flour is in makes the dough tough and the cookies hard, so stop as soon as it holds together for rolling.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, nutmeg, clove, flour, cinnamon. 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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