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Cookies No. 1

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Cookies No. 1

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Gradually add the sugar and mix well.

  3. Add the beaten egg and milk, and combine thoroughly.

  4. In another bowl, mix the flour, salt, baking powder, and caraway seeds.

  5. Add the dry mixture to the wet mixture and combine.

  6. Chill the dough before rolling it out.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Swap the caraway

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Carawaythe original
  4. Jalapenofits about as well

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

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