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Dessert

Cream Cookies

Cookies made with butter, sour cream, sugar, eggs, baking soda, and flour, rolled thin, sprinkled with sugar, and baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cream 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.

Prepare the dough

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until smooth.

  3. Add the sour cream and eggs, mixing well.

  4. Stir in the baking soda and enough flour to form a soft dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough thinly on a floured surface.

  2. Sprinkle the rolled dough generously with sugar and lightly roll over it with a rolling pin.

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

  4. Bake in the preheated oven until lightly golden.

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

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Creams with sugar to add richness and a tender, smooth texture to the dough.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, sprinkled on top, helps the cookies brown and crisp at the surface.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and acidity, keeping the cookies soft and tender.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour cream's acidity to produce gas that helps the cookies rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Sprinkling and rolling the sugar on the dough. Sugar pressed into the rolled surface caramelises during baking, giving browning and a slight crunch. Too little leaves the cookies pale and plain, while pressing too hard can toughen the dough.

“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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