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Dessert

Cardamom Cookies

Cookies made with boiled egg yolks, sugar, lemon peel, brandy, butter, flour, cardamom, rosewater, and topped with almonds and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cardamom match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 405 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Cardamom Cookies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs hard.

  2. Cool and shell the eggs.

  3. Grate the yolks and reserve the whites for salads or garnishing.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine the grated yolks, sugar, lemon peel, and brandy.

  2. Cream the butter and add it to the mixture.

  3. Gradually sift in the flour until the dough is workable.

  4. Add the cardamom seeds and a few drops of rosewater.

  5. If desired, sift the pulverized ammonia with the flour for lighter cookies.

Shape and finish

  1. Flour the board generously and roll out the dough.

  2. Cut out shapes with a fancy cutter and brush with beaten egg.

  3. Sprinkle pounded almonds and sugar on top.

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. Lemon + cardamomtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Cardamom + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together457 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + cardamomtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together643 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Add richness and fat, helping bind the dough and give it a tender texture.
Butter
Provides fat that makes the dough tender and rich in flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cookies brown lightly on the surface.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the dough, set by the flour's gluten and starch.
Pulverized ammonia
Acts as a leavening agent, releasing gas to lighten the cookies.

The step that matters

Gradually sift in the flour until the dough is workable. Adding flour too quickly can make the dough stiff and dry, while too little leaves it sticky and hard to roll. Adding it gradually lets you reach a soft, rollable texture that holds its shape when cut.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, brandy, butter, flour, cardamom, almond):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, brandy, butter, flour, cardamom, almond. 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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