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Dessert

Cream Cookies

Cookies made with eggs, sugar, butter, lard, cream, flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, nutmeg, optionally topped with nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the sugar, butter, and lard.

  3. Add the cream to the egg mixture, reserving part for later.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the reserved cream with baking soda and baking powder.

  5. Mix the two mixtures together, then add salt and nutmeg.

  6. Gradually add flour until the dough is soft and manageable.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough to a thickness of about ½ inch.

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

  3. If desired, place a raisin in the center of each cookie and sprinkle with sugar.

  4. Bake in the preheated oven until 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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Nuts + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together239 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure as they set in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the cookies brown as they bake.
Butter
Adds fat for flavor and a tender texture in the baked cookie.
Lard
Adds fat that keeps the cookies tender and helps them stay soft.
Baking powder
Produces gas that lifts the dough so the cookies rise and lighten.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic dairy to lift the dough and promote browning.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until the dough is soft and manageable. Too much flour makes the dough stiff and dense, producing tough cookies, while too little leaves it sticky and hard to shape. Adding flour gradually lets you stop once the dough is workable.

Swap the nuts

The recipe marks nuts as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, butter, cream, flour, nutmeg):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, cream, flour, nutmeg. 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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