Why it works: Cream and butter 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 ↓
Cream 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
In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.
Add the eggs, sour cream, baking soda, and lemon extract (or nutmeg) and mix well.
Gradually add flour until the dough is soft enough to roll out.
Shape and bake
Roll out the dough and cut into desired shapes.
Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until lightly golden.
Let cool before serving.
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.
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Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Sugar
- Sweetens the dough and, creamed with butter, helps give the cookies a tender crumb.
- Butter
- Adds fat and richness, and creaming it with sugar traps air for a lighter texture.
- Eggs
- Bind the dough and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
- Sour cream
- Adds moisture and tang, keeping the cookies soft and tender.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acidity of the sour cream to leaven the dough and aid browning.
The step that matters
Gradually add flour until the dough is soft enough to roll out. Flour is added in stages so you can stop once the dough is soft but workable. Too much flour makes the cookies dry and tough, while too little leaves the dough sticky and hard to cut.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, cream, butter, flour):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Coconutfits about as well
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, cream, butter, 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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