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Dessert

Pepper Nuts

A sweet and spicy nut cookie made with powdered sugar, eggs, hickory nuts, spices, flour, and citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 ↓

Pepper Nuts

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Beat the eggs well.

  2. Add the powdered sugar and beat again.

  3. Cut the citron into bits.

  4. Add the citron along with the hickory nuts and spices.

  5. Sift together the flour, baking soda, and salt.

  6. Gradually add the flour mixture until you can knead it in.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough into small balls and place them an inch apart on a baking sheet.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until done.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Nuts + cinnamontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together487 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Nuts + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Eggs
Bind the dough and give it structure and moisture as it bakes.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the dough a tender texture.
Hickory nuts
Add crunch and rich, nutty flavor throughout the cookies.
Baking soda
Reacts with the dough to help it rise and brown in the oven.
Ground cinnamon
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the dough.

The step that matters

Gradually add the flour mixture until you can knead it in. Adding flour gradually lets you judge the dough's stiffness. Too much flour makes the cookies dry and dense, while too little leaves the dough sticky and hard to shape.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, clove, cinnamon, flour):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, clove, cinnamon, 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.

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