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Dessert

Sour Cream Seed Cookies

Cookies made with sour cream, butter, sugar, flour, egg, baking soda, and caraway seeds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and caraway match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,435 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sour Cream Seed Cookies

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Gradually add the sugar while stirring constantly.

  3. Add the beaten egg and sour cream, mixing well.

  4. Sift the flour with the baking soda, then add the caraway seeds.

  5. Mix the dry ingredients into the wet mixture until thoroughly blended.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the dough onto a buttered baking sheet, spacing them two inches apart.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) 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 + carawaytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the cookies tenderness and flavor.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and acidity that keeps the cookies soft and tender.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the cookies brown as they bake.
Bread flour
Provides the structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds structure and richness.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour cream's acidity to lift the cookies and aid browning.

The step that matters

Mix the dry ingredients into the wet mixture until thoroughly blended. Overmixing once the flour is added develops gluten, which can make the cookies tough. Mix only until no dry flour streaks remain.

Swap the caraway

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Carawaythe original

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