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Dessert

Buckwheat Cookies

Buckwheat cookies are made with sugar, eggs, shortening, milk, cinnamon, salt, and buckwheat flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Buckwheat and flour work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 660 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Buckwheat 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.

Make the dough

  1. Beat the eggs well, then gradually add the sugar while beating constantly.

  2. Add the melted shortening and milk, and beat again.

  3. Sift the dry ingredients together and add to the mixture.

  4. Knead the dough slightly, roll it thinly, cut into cookies.

Bake

  1. Bake for 12 to 16 minutes in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

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. Buckwheat + flourtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together660 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cinnamon + buckwheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together56 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness to the cookies.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cookies brown during baking.
Shortening
Adds fat that tenderizes the cookies and carries flavor.
Milk
Adds moisture that hydrates the flour and dough.
Buckwheat flour
Forms the main structure of the cookies, with its own nutty flavor.

Swap the buckwheat

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Buckwheatthe original
  3. Allspicefits less well
  4. Clovefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, cinnamon, 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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