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 ↓
Sour 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. 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
Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).
Make the dough
In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.
Add the eggs, sour cream, baking soda, salt, and lemon extract or nutmeg. Mix well.
Gradually add flour until the dough is manageable.
Bake
Drop spoonfuls of dough onto a greased baking sheet.
Bake for 10-12 minutes or until lightly golden.
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.
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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 helps create a tender, lightly crisp texture when creamed with butter.
- Butter
- Adds fat and richness, and creaming it traps air that lightens the cookies.
- Eggs
- Bind the dough and add structure and moisture to the cookies.
- Sour cream
- Adds moisture and acidity, giving the cookies a soft, tender crumb.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the sour cream's acidity to produce gas that helps the cookies rise.
- Flour
- Provides the structure that sets the dough and holds the cookies together as they bake.
The step that matters
Adding the flour gradually. Too much flour makes the dough stiff and dry, producing dense, tough cookies. Adding it in stages lets you stop once the dough is just workable, keeping the cookies tender.
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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