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Dessert

Old-fashioned Caraway Cookies

Cookies made with butter, sugar, milk, eggs, flour, baking powder, salt, vanilla, and caraway seeds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Old-fashioned Caraway Cookies

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the dough

  1. Cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the milk, beaten eggs, flour sifted with baking powder and salt, caraway seeds, and vanilla.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough very thin and cut into fancy shapes.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until lightly browned.

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. Vanilla + milktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Caraway + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to add fat and tenderness to the cookie texture.
Sugar
Creams with butter for sweetness and helps the cookies brown.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure as they set in the oven.
All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the dough as its proteins and starch set.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough to give a light, lifted texture.

The step that matters

Roll out the dough very thin. Thin dough bakes through and browns evenly, while thick dough stays soft in the center and can spread unevenly. Cut shapes should be uniform so they bake at the same rate.

Swap the caraway

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Carawaythe original
  4. Clovefits about as well

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