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Dessert

Sugar Snaps

A sweet cookie made from sugar, butter, water, baking soda, cream of tartar, and flour, baked until lightly golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sugar Snaps

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  2. Add the water, baking soda, and cream of tartar, mixing well.

  3. Gradually add flour until the dough is stiff and can be rolled out thin.

Shape and bake

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

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until lightly 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender texture and rich flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the cookies brown.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the dough to produce gas that lifts the cookies.
Cream of tartar
Supplies acid that reacts with baking soda to help the cookies rise.

The step that matters

Adding the flour gradually. Flour sets the dough's stiffness and structure. Adding it slowly lets you stop when the dough can be rolled thin. Too little flour makes the cookies spread, while too much, or overworking it, makes them tough as gluten develops.

“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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