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Dessert

Watee Cookies

Cookies made with sugar, butter, water, and caraway seeds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Watee Cookies

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

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

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  2. Add the water and mix until combined.

  3. Stir in caraway seeds to taste.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough very thin on a floured surface.

  2. Cut into desired shapes and place on baking tins.

  3. Sprinkle additional sugar on top before baking.

  4. Bake 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. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Sugar + carawaytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Butter + carawaytop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cookies brown and crisp as they bake.
Butter
Provides fat that gives the cookies a tender, rich texture and flavour.
Caraway seeds
Adds a distinctive aromatic, slightly peppery flavour to the dough.

The step that matters

Roll the dough very thin. Thin dough bakes quickly and dries out into a crisp cookie. Thick dough stays soft and doughy in the centre and may not brown evenly.

Swap the caraway

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter. 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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