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Dessert

Chocolate Cookies

Chocolate cookies made with sugar, butter, eggs, flour, chocolate, pecans, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Chocolate Cookies

Why it works: Chocolate and pecans work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 804 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Chocolate 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. The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and mix well.

  3. Melt the Bakers chocolate and stir it into the mixture.

  4. Fold in the flour, pecans, and baking powder until combined.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the dough onto a buttered baking sheet.

  2. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until set.

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. Chocolate + pecanstop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Butter + pecanstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,416 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure as they set in the oven.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cookies rise and turn lighter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cookies brown and crisp at the edges.
Bakers chocolate
Gives the cookies their chocolate flavor and rich, fudgy body.

The step that matters

Bake for 10-12 minutes or until set. Cookies keep firming as they cool, so pulling them too late dries them out, while pulling them too early leaves the centers gooey and unset.

Swap the pecans

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Macadamia nutfits about as well
  3. Hazelnutfits about as well
  4. Pecansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, flour, chocolate. 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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