Name: Peanut Cookies
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons butter; ½ cup sugar; 1 egg; ¾ cup flour; 1 teaspoon baking powder; ½ teaspoon salt; 2 tablespoons milk; ¾ cup finely chopped peanuts; ¼ teaspoon lemon extract

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Peanut Cookies

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the dough

In a bowl, cream the butter and sugar together.
Add the egg and mix well.
Stir in the flour, baking powder, salt, milk, chopped peanuts, and lemon extract until combined.

Bake

Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto buttered baking sheets, spacing them 1 inch apart.
Bake for 10-12 minutes or 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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + peanuttop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,048 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Butter: Creams with sugar to add richness and a tender crumb.
Sugar: Sweetens the cookies and helps them brown during baking.
Egg: Binds the dough and adds structure to the cookies.
Flour: Provides the main structure that holds the cookies together.
Baking powder: Releases gas during baking so the cookies rise and lighten.
Chopped peanuts: Add nutty flavor and a crunchy texture throughout the cookies.

Swap the peanut

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

Almondfits better
Pistachiofits better
Milletfits better
Peanutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, flour, milk, lemon. 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.