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Dessert

Maple Sugar Cookies

Maple sugar cookies are sweet biscuits made with maple sugar, butter, eggs, flour, baking powder, and nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Maple Sugar 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, mix the maple sugar, baking powder, and butter until well combined.

  3. Add the beaten eggs and mix thoroughly.

  4. Gradually add flour until the dough is workable.

Shape and bake

  1. Sprinkle the dough with chopped nuts.

  2. Roll the dough out.

  3. Cut the rolled dough into desired shapes.

  4. Place the dough on a baking sheet.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + nutstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Maple sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cookies brown as they bake.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping the cookies rise and turn light.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the cookies rich and tender.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add moisture and structure as they set.
Flour
Provides the structure that lets the dough be rolled and cut into shapes.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until the dough is workable. Flour forms gluten when mixed with liquid, and overworking the dough develops too much gluten, making the cookies tough. Adding flour gradually lets you stop once the dough can be rolled.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Macadamia nutfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, 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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