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 ↓
Sour Cream 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.
Make the dough
Cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.
Add the sour cream, nutmeg, and eggs; mix well.
In a separate bowl, combine the baking powder, baking soda, and enough flour to form a soft dough.
Gradually add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients until combined.
Bake
Drop spoonfuls of dough onto the bottoms of greased tins.
Bake at 350°F (175°C) until lightly golden.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together18,623 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,920 recipes
Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
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
- Sugar
- Sweetens the dough and helps it brown while creaming with butter adds lightness.
- Butter
- Adds fat for richness and tenderness, and creaming it traps air for a lighter crumb.
- Sour cream
- Adds moisture and acidity, giving a tender texture and a tangy flavor.
- Eggs
- Bind the dough and add structure as they set during baking.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the sour cream's acidity to produce gas, helping the cookies rise.
- Baking powder
- Provides additional lift as it releases gas in the oven.
The step that matters
Gradually add the flour mixture. Adding the dry mixture slowly and mixing only until combined keeps the dough tender, because overmixing develops gluten and makes cookies tough.
“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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