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Peanut Butter Dainties

Peanut butter cookies made with peanut butter, flour, sugar, eggs, and baking powder, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Peanut Butter Dainties

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.

Make the dough

  1. Cream the peanut butter in a bowl.

  2. Mix in the sugar and flour until smooth.

  3. Add the well-beaten eggs and baking powder, and mix well.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto buttered paper, ½ inch apart.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Peanut + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Peanut + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,754 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

Peanut butter
Adds fat and rich peanut flavor, helping the cookies stay tender.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cookies brown at the edges.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and moisture to the cookies.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cookies rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. Cookies keep firming as they cool, so pulling them once the edges turn golden keeps them soft rather than dry and brittle. Leaving ½ inch between spoonfuls allows them to spread without merging.

Swap the peanut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Macadamia nutfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peanutthe original

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