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Dessert

Rich Cookies

A buttery cookie dough with sugar, eggs, cream, baking powder, and flour, rolled thin and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Rich Cookies

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Rich 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.

Make the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the egg yolks and cream, mixing well.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  5. Fold the beaten egg whites into the mixture.

  6. Stir in the baking powder and enough flour to form a dough that can be rolled out thin.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into desired shapes.

  2. Brush the tops of the cookies with a little beaten egg white.

  3. Sprinkle lightly with granulated sugar before baking.

  4. Bake until lightly 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.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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
Creams with the sugar to give the cookies richness and a tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cookies and, creamed with butter, helps create a light texture.
Eggs
Yolks add richness and binding; whipped whites add lightness to the dough.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping the cookies rise and lighten.
Flour
Provides the structure that lets the dough be rolled out thin and hold its shape.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Stiff whites hold air in the batter, and overmixing or deflating them during folding loses that lift, making the cookies denser and flatter.

“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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