Skip to main content
Dessert

Cookies. Mrs. Russell.

Cookies made with butter, sugar, sour cream, baking soda, cream of tartar, eggs, caraway seeds, nutmeg, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Caraway and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 200 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Cookies. Mrs. Russell.

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, rub together the butter and sugar until creamy.

  3. Add the sour cream, baking soda, cream of tartar, eggs, caraway seeds, and nutmeg.

  4. Mix in enough flour to form a soft dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough thinly and cut into shapes.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven until golden.

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. Caraway + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together200 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Caraway + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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 create a tender, rich crumb and flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the cookies and helps them brown as they bake.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and acidity that keeps the cookies soft and tender.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream to lift and help the cookies rise.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that works with the baking soda to aid leavening.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure.

The step that matters

Roll out the dough thinly. Thin dough bakes quickly and evenly, so the cookies turn golden and crisp at the edges while staying tender inside. Thick dough can bake unevenly or stay doughy in the middle.

Swap the caraway

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, cream, egg, nutmeg, flour):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Carawaythe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, cream, egg, nutmeg, 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.

You might also like

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