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Dessert

Nut Cookies

Cookies made with sour cream, sugar, butter, eggs, baking soda, nutmeg, vanilla, baking powder, nuts, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Nut 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the dough

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

  2. In a large bowl, mix together the sour cream, sugar, and butter until smooth.

  3. Add the eggs, baking soda, grated nutmeg, vanilla extract, and baking powder, then mix well.

  4. Stir in the chopped nuts.

  5. Gradually add flour until you achieve a soft dough.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of dough onto a baking sheet.

  2. Bake for 10-12 minutes or 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Vanilla + nutstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together638 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

Sour cream
Adds moisture and acidity, which keeps the cookies tender and reacts with the baking soda.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cookies brown at the edges.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure as they set in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream to produce gas that helps the cookies rise.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together and sets the cookie shape.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until the dough is soft. Adding flour slowly and stopping once the dough is soft prevents too much flour and overworking. Extra flour and overmixing develop gluten, which makes the cookies dense and dry.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, butter, egg, nutmeg, vanilla, 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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