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 ↓
Cream 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.
Prepare the dough
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.
Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.
Stir in the sour cream and lemon flavoring.
Gradually add flour until the dough is workable.
Shape and bake
Roll out the dough and cut into desired shapes.
Place the cookies on the bottom of an inverted pan.
Bake until golden.
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.
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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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 trap air, giving the cookies a light, tender crumb.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the cookies and, creamed with butter, helps create a light texture.
- Eggs
- Add structure and richness, binding the dough together.
- Sour cream
- Adds moisture and tang, keeping the cookies soft.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acidity of the sour cream to help the cookies rise.
- Flour
- Provides the structure that lets the dough be rolled and cut.
The step that matters
Gradually add flour until the dough is workable. Adding too much flour makes the dough dry and tough, while too little leaves it sticky and hard to roll and cut. Adding it gradually lets you stop once the dough holds its shape.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, egg, cream, flour):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Coconutfits about as well
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, cream, 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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