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Dessert

Butter Cookies

A lemon-flavored cookie made with eggs, butter, sugar, flour, almonds, and spices, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

Butter Cookies

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the eggs, lemon rind, lemon juice, cinnamon, and cloves.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough thin and shape it with a cookie cutter.

  2. Place a piece of citron or an almond on top of each cookie.

  3. Bake in the preheated oven until golden.

Make the almond butter cookies

  1. For almond butter cookies, cream the butter and gradually add powdered sugar.

  2. Mix in chopped almonds, egg yolks, lemon rind, a little lemon juice, and flour.

  3. Roll thin, shape with a cookie cutter, brush with egg, and sprinkle with cinnamon, sugar, and chopped almonds.

  4. Bake in buttered pans in the preheated oven.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Cinnamon + flourtop 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

Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure as they set in the oven.
Butter
Provides fat for a tender, rich texture and flavour.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the cookies their structure.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and dissolves finely, giving a smooth, tender crumb.
Chopped almonds
Add nutty flavour and a crunchy texture to the cookies.

The step that matters

Roll the dough thin. Thin dough bakes quickly and evenly, turning crisp and golden. Thick dough stays soft in the centre and may brown unevenly before it is fully baked.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cinnamon, clove, butter, sugar, almond, 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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