Why it works: Caraway and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,435 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
New Year's Cookies
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Make the dough
Cream together the butter and sugar until smooth.
Add the eggs, sour milk, saleratus, caraway seeds, and mace.
Mix in enough flour to make a stiff dough.
Shape and bake
Roll the dough thin and cut into rounds.
Roll the cookies in fine sugar instead of flour.
Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 15 minutes.
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.
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Caraway + flourtop 6% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together1,435 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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
- Adds richness and tenderness, and helps the cookies brown and carry flavor.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the dough and helps it brown while creaming with butter adds lightness.
- Eggs
- Bind the dough and add structure as the cookies set in the oven.
- Sour milk
- Its acidity reacts with saleratus so the cookies rise and gain a tender crumb.
- Saleratus
- Leavens the dough by reacting with the acidic sour milk to produce gas.
- Flour
- Provides the structure that lets the stiff dough be rolled thin and cut.
The step that matters
Mix in enough flour to make a stiff dough. Too little flour leaves the dough too soft to roll and cut cleanly, while too much makes the cookies tough and dry. Stopping when the dough is stiff but still workable gives thin, crisp cookies.
Swap the mace
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, egg, milk, caraway, flour):
- Cinnamonfits better
- Nutmegfits better
- Turmericfits better
- Macethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, milk, caraway, 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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