Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
Cream 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.
Make the dough
In a large bowl, mix together the sugar, sour cream, and butter or shortening until well combined.
Add the eggs, baking powder, and baking soda to the mixture and stir until smooth. Be careful not to make the dough too stiff.
Bake
Drop spoonfuls of dough onto a baking sheet.
Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.
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.
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Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Sugar
- Sweetens the dough and helps the cookies brown as they bake.
- Sour cream
- Adds moisture and acidity, giving the cookies a tender texture.
- Butter or shortening
- Adds fat for richness and a soft, tender crumb.
- Eggs
- Bind the dough and add structure and richness to the cookies.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas in the oven so the cookies rise and lighten.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the sour cream's acidity to help the cookies rise and brown.
The step that matters
Keep the dough soft when mixing in the eggs and leaveners. Overmixing or adding too much structure makes the dough stiff, which yields dense, tough cookies instead of tender, lightly risen ones.
“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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