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Cookies

A simple molasses cookie made with butter, sugar, egg, molasses, baking powder, flour, and sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,341 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cookies

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the pulverized sugar and butter.

  3. Add the egg and molasses, mixing well.

  4. Stir in the baking powder and enough flour to form a dough that can be rolled out.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough thin and sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon.

  2. Cut into shapes using a cookie cutter.

  3. Place on a baking sheet and bake 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. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Molasses + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to create fat-based tenderness and a rich texture in the cookies.
Pulverized sugar
Creamed with butter for sweetness and to help give the cookies a fine, tender crumb.
Egg
Binds the dough together and adds structure as the cookies set in the oven.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and the characteristic deep flavour and colour of molasses cookies.
Rumford baking powder
Releases gas to lift the dough so the cookies rise and stay light rather than dense.

The step that matters

Stir in the baking powder and flour. Adding just enough flour keeps the dough workable; too much makes cookies dry and tough, while the baking powder must be evenly mixed to rise uniformly.

“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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