Skip to main content
Dessert

Anise Cookies

Cookies flavored with ground anise seed, made from eggs, powdered sugar, flour, and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Anise and flour work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 270 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Anise Cookies

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Beat the eggs for 5 minutes without separating them.

  2. Mix in the powdered sugar and beat for 30 minutes.

  3. Add the ground anise seed and stir for 5 minutes.

  4. Incorporate the flour and beat for 10 minutes.

Rest and bake

  1. Drop small spoonfuls onto a pan and let them stand overnight.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until just slightly brown on the bottom.

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. Anise + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together270 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + anisetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together328 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Beaten with the sugar, they trap air that gives the dough its lift and light structure.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the dough and dissolves easily, giving a fine, smooth texture.
Ground anise seed
Supplies the dish's characteristic licorice-like aroma.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cookies' shape as they set.

The step that matters

Let the cookies stand overnight. Standing lets a dry skin form on the surface. In the oven the cookies then rise upward and develop their characteristic base instead of spreading flat.

Swap the anise

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Anisethe original

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

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes