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Dessert

Nice Cookies

Cookies made with sugar, butter, lard, molasses, ginger, baking soda, sweet milk, cream of tartar, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Nice 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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, cream together the sugar, butter, and lard.

  2. Add the eggs and molasses, mixing well.

  3. Stir in the ginger, baking soda, sweet milk, and cream of tartar.

  4. Gradually add flour until the mixture is soft.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the dough onto a baking sheet.

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

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  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 and lard
Fat that tenderises the cookies and carries flavour through the dough.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and deep colour, helping the cookies brown.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas, helping the cookies rise and spread.
Cream of tartar
Acid that works with the baking soda to help leavening and keep the texture soft.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cookies as they bake.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until the mixture is soft. Flour absorbs liquid and builds structure as it is mixed in. Adding it gradually lets you judge texture, since too much flour makes the cookies dry and dense.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, butter, molasses, milk, cream, 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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