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Dessert

Hickory Nut Cookies

A cookie made with sugar, eggs, butter, milk, cream of tartar, baking soda, and hickory nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Hickory Nut 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, mix together the sugar, eggs, and melted butter until well combined.

  2. Add the milk, cream of tartar, and baking soda, and stir until smooth.

  3. Fold in the chopped hickory nuts.

Bake

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

  2. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until the edges are 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.

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. Milk + nutstop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together982 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure as they set in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the cookies tenderness and flavor.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the dough, stabilizing texture and reacting with baking soda to aid rising.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the dough to produce gas that lifts the cookies.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and contributes to spreading and golden browning.
Hickory nuts
Add crunch and a rich, nutty flavor throughout the cookies.

The step that matters

Baking time and edge color. Baking soda and cream of tartar lift the dough quickly, and sugar browns fast at the edges. Pulling the cookies once the edges are lightly golden keeps them tender rather than dry or hard.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Filbertfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

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