Skip to main content
Dessert

Ammokia Cookies

Cookies made with ammonia, sugar, milk, eggs, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Ammokia Cookies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the milk

  1. Dissolve the ammonia in the milk and let it stand overnight.

Make and bake the cookies

  1. In the morning, cream the butter with 3 cups of sugar.

  2. Add the eggs and enough flour to make a soft dough.

  3. Roll out the dough and cut it into cookies.

  4. Sprinkle with the remaining cup of sugar and bake.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Ammonia
Acts as a leavening agent that gives the cookies lift as it breaks down in the dough.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the cookies tender and rich in flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the cookies and helps them brown on the surface.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add moisture and structure to the cookies.
Flour
Builds the structure that holds the soft dough together and gives the cookies their body.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture to the dough and carries the dissolved ammonia.

The step that matters

Dissolving the ammonia in the milk. The ammonia needs to dissolve fully in the milk before mixing so it spreads evenly through the dough. Letting it stand overnight gives it time to dissolve completely, so the leavening works consistently across the batch.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes