Name: Rich Cookies
Ingredients: 1 cup sugar; ½ teaspoon vanilla; 1 egg, well beaten; ½ cup butter; flour (amount not specified); nuts, raisins, or citron (for topping)

Why it works: Vanilla and nuts work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 638 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Rich Cookies

Ingredients

Directions

Cream the butter and add the sugar slowly, mixing well.
Beat the egg until very light and add it to the mixture.
Gradually add flour until the mixture reaches a dough-like consistency.
Stir in the vanilla.
Drop small portions onto a well-greased pan, about two inches apart.
Spread each cookie evenly with a knife dipped in cold water.
Top each cookie with small pieces of nuts, raisins, or citron.

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.

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.

Vanilla + nutstop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together638 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together35,032 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Vanilla + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,241 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + nutstop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,180 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Swap the nuts

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

Almondfits better
Chestnutfits better
Macadamia nutfits better
Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vanilla, egg, butter, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.