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Dessert

Spice Cookies

A sweet cookie made with butter milk, lard, sugar, eggs, spices, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Spice Cookies

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Spice 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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, combine butter milk, lard, sugar, eggs, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg.

  2. Gradually add flour until the mixture is very soft.

Shape

  1. Form the dough into small balls, about the size of a hulled walnut.

  2. Place the balls on a baking pan and flatten them with your fingers.

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.

  1. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter milk
Adds moisture and acidity that tenderizes the dough and reacts with the baking soda.
Lard
Provides fat that keeps the cookies tender and short in texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cookies brown and stay soft.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure as the cookies set.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic butter milk to produce gas that helps the cookies rise and brown.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together once baked.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until the mixture is very soft. Flour absorbs liquid and firms the dough as it is added. Adding it all at once or too much makes the dough stiff and dry, which yields dense, tough cookies. Stop when the dough is soft.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Allspicefits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, sugar, egg, cinnamon, nutmeg, 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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