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Dessert

Walnut Cookies

A simple cookie made with butter, sugar, eggs, walnuts, baking powder, lemon extract, and flour, dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,149 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Walnut 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the eggs, chopped walnuts, baking powder, and lemon extract; mix well.

  4. Gradually add flour until the dough is manageable.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough very thin and cut into desired shapes.

  2. Dust with powdered sugar before baking.

  3. Bake until very light brown.

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. Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Walnut + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 and rich flavor.
Sugar
Creams with butter for lift and adds sweetness, and helps the cookies brown as they bake.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add moisture and structure as they set during baking.
Chopped walnuts
Add crunch and a toasted, nutty flavor to the cookies.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking to help the cookies rise and lighten.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together and sets as the cookies bake.

The step that matters

Roll the dough very thin. Thin dough bakes quickly and evenly, so the cookies crisp and brown without drying out or burning at the edges. Thick pieces stay soft in the center and brown unevenly.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Milletfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

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