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Dessert

Southern Sour Cream Cookies

A cookie made with butter, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, sour milk, lemon extract, sour cream, vanilla extract, egg, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla 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 ↓

Southern Sour Cream Cookies

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the baking soda, baking powder, sour milk, lemon extract, sour cream, vanilla extract, and beaten egg in the order given.

  3. Stir in enough flour to form a dough that can be rolled out, but not too thin.

Shape and bake

  1. Cut the dough into rounds.

  2. Sprinkle the rounds with sugar.

  3. Bake the cookies.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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
Creamed with sugar to add fat and a tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cookies and helps create a crisp, golden surface when baked.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk and sour cream acids to lift and lighten the cookies.
Baking powder
Provides additional rising so the cookies puff during baking.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds tenderness and tang.
Sour cream
Adds moisture, richness and acidity for a tender crumb.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour. Adding flour gradually and stopping once the dough can be rolled keeps it from becoming tough. Too much flour dries the dough and makes the cookies dense.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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