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Dessert

Christmas Cookies

A sweet cookie dough flavored with coriander seed and spices, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and buttermilk match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,973 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Christmas 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. Cream the butter and brown sugar together.

  2. Add the buttermilk and baking soda, mixing well.

  3. Stir in the powdered coriander seed and mixed spices.

  4. Form a stiff dough and roll it out thin.

Bake and store

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

  2. Store in an earthen jar for up to 6 months.

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. Sugar + buttermilktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + buttermilktop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,674 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Buttermilk + coriandertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together49 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + coriandertop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,574 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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 give the cookies richness and a tender crumb.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture and caramel flavour, and helps the cookies brown.
Buttermilk
Adds moisture and acidity that works with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to release gas, helping the cookies rise and brown.
Powdered coriander seed
Contributes aroma and a warm, citrusy spice flavour to the dough.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough thin. A stiff dough rolled too thick may bake unevenly, staying doughy in the centre while the edges over-brown. Rolling to an even, thin thickness lets the cookies bake through and turn golden at the same rate.

Swap the coriander

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Corianderthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, buttermilk. 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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