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Dessert

Heemit Cookies

Cookies made with butter, sugar, baking soda, eggs, water, spices, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Heemit 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 the dough

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

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

  3. Add the dissolved baking soda and eggs to the mixture, and stir well.

  4. Mix in the water, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg.

  5. Gradually add flour until the dough is soft and manageable.

Shape and bake

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

  2. Place on a baking sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes or 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.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air, giving the cookies a tender, rich texture.
Sugar
Creams with butter for lightness and adds sweetness and browning during baking.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and moisture to the cookies.
Baking soda
Reacts to lift and lighten the dough as the cookies bake.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the shaped dough together.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until the dough is soft and manageable. Adding too much flour makes the dough stiff and dry, producing tough cookies. Adding it gradually lets you stop once the dough is soft enough to roll.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Allspicefits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, sugar, egg, cinnamon, nutmeg. 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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