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 ↓
Good Cookies
Ingredients
Directions
Make the dough
Melt the butter and mix it with the sugar. Beat in the egg.
Dissolve the baking soda in a little water and add it to the sour milk.
Combine all ingredients and add enough flour to form a dough.
Bake
Roll the dough thin and bake in a preheated oven.
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 + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 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
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps the cookies brown and crisp as they bake.
- Butter
- Adds fat for tenderness and rich flavor in the cookie.
- Egg
- Binds the dough and adds structure and richness.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acidic sour milk or buttermilk to produce gas, helping the cookies rise and lighten.
- Sour milk or buttermilk
- Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds moisture and tang.
- Flour
- Provides the structure that holds the dough together.
The step that matters
Dissolve the baking soda in a little water and add it to the sour milk. Baking soda needs an acid to react and produce gas. Dissolving it evenly in the liquid spreads it through the dough so the cookies rise uniformly rather than in patches.
“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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