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Dessert

Sugar Cookies

A sweet baked cookie made with sugar, butter, eggs, milk, baking powder, flour, salt, and vanilla or lemon flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Sugar Cookies

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter (or butter and lard).

  2. Add the eggs and sweet milk, mixing well.

  3. Stir in the baking powder, salt, and flavoring.

  4. Gradually add flour until a nice dough forms.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough thin and cut into shapes.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven 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.

  1. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Sweetens the dough and helps it cream with the fat to a light base.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor, and helps the dough cream smoothly.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough so the cookies rise and stay light.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together for rolling and cutting.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until a nice dough forms. Adding too much flour at once or overworking the dough makes cookies tough and dry. Adding it gradually lets you stop once the dough is rollable, keeping the cookies tender.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Vanillathe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, 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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