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Dessert

Assorted Cookies

A large batch of cookies made with flour, lard, eggs, honey, water, ammonia, baking soda, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Assorted Cookies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix all ingredients except 5 pounds of flour the night before.

  2. Add the reserved flour the next morning.

Shape and bake

  1. Knead the dough until well combined.

  2. Shape into cookies and bake 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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + honeytop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,637 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + honeytop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Flour
Forms the dough's structure, setting the cookie's crumb as it bakes.
Lard
Adds fat for tenderness and a short, crumbly texture.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add moisture and structure.
Honey
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps browning.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidic ingredients to release gas, helping the cookies rise.
Ammonia
Acts as a leavening agent, releasing gas as the cookies bake.

The step that matters

Shape into cookies and bake until golden.. Baking until golden, rather than pulling early or overbaking, sets the structure while keeping the cookies from drying out. Browning also develops flavor through the Maillard reaction.

“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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