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Dessert

Sugar Cookies and Coffee

A sweet cookie dough flavored with coffee, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Sugar Cookies and Coffee

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

Prepare the dough

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

  2. In a bowl, combine the butter and sugar.

  3. Beat the eggs and add them to the mixture.

  4. Pour in the milk and mix well.

  5. Gradually add flour until the dough is not sticky.

Shape and bake

  1. Dust a bread board with flour and roll out the dough with a floured rolling pin.

  2. Cut into desired shapes and place on a baking sheet.

  3. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until lightly golden.

Serve the coffee

  1. For coffee, brew the ground coffee with hot water and serve with cream.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Milk + coffeetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the cookies stay tender and carry flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the cookies brown as they bake.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness to the cookies.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the cookies rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Adding the flour gradually. Too much flour makes the dough dry and tough, while too little leaves it sticky and hard to shape. Adding it slowly lets you stop when the dough is workable.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, milk, cream, coffee, 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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