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Dessert

Peanut Cookies

A sweet cookie made with roasted peanuts, butter, sugar, eggs, milk, salt, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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

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

  1. Remove the inner skin from the peanuts and chop them very finely or process them through a meat grinder.

Make the dough

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

  2. Add the eggs, milk, and salt to the mixture and mix well.

  3. Stir in the chopped peanuts and enough flour to form a soft dough.

Bake

  1. Roll out the dough, cut into shapes, and bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until 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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Peanut + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,048 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. 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 tenderness and richness to the cookie.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and moisture to the cookies.
Roasted peanuts
Provide the main flavor and body of the cookie.
Flour
Provides structure so the dough holds its shape when rolled and cut.

The step that matters

Chopping the peanuts. Peanuts chopped too coarsely create uneven dough that breaks apart when rolled and cut. Very fine chopping or grinding gives an even texture that holds together and bakes uniformly.

Swap the peanut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Milletfits better
  4. Peanutthe original

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