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Dessert

Winter Cookies

A sweet, spiced cookie made with butter, lard, molasses, brown sugar, cinnamon, cloves, sour milk, baking soda, raisins or citron, nuts, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Winter Cookies

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a saucepan, heat the butter, lard, and molasses until melted.

  2. While hot, stir in the brown sugar, cinnamon, cloves, sour milk, and baking soda.

  3. Add the raisins or citron and nuts, mixing well.

  4. Gradually add flour until the dough is easy to roll.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough while still warm and cut into desired shapes.

  2. Bake the cookies 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and helps the cookies brown as they bake.
Lard
Adds fat that keeps the dough soft and makes the cookies tender.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, deep flavor, and moisture that keeps the cookies chewy.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and contributes to browning during baking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to produce gas, helping the cookies rise.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds tang and tenderness to the dough.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until the dough is easy to roll. Flour absorbs liquid and builds structure. Adding too much makes the cookies dry and tough, while too little leaves the dough sticky and hard to shape.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, molasses, sugar, cinnamon, milk, raisin, almond):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, molasses, sugar, cinnamon, milk, raisin, 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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