Skip to main content

Wine Cookies

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Wine Cookies

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Grind the almonds, citron, and chocolate in a meat grinder; then add the spices.

  2. Separate the eggs and beat them well; add sugar, flour, and baking powder, then mix in the fruit.

  3. Drop half a teaspoon of the mixture onto a plate of sugar; roll into small balls in the palm of your hand.

  4. Bake in buttered pans, placing them an inch apart.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Almond + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, chocolate, cinnamon, allspice, sugar, egg, flour):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Gingerfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, chocolate, cinnamon, allspice, sugar, egg, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

You might also like