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Dessert

Pecan Cookies

Cookies made with butter, sugar, sweet milk, flour, baking powder, and chopped pecans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Pecan Cookies

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Pecan 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

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

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the sweet milk and mix well.

  3. In another bowl, combine the flour and baking powder.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture.

  5. Fold in the chopped pecans.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the dough onto greased parchment paper on a baking sheet.

  2. Bake until lightly golden, about 10-12 minutes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + pecanstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,416 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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
Creaming with sugar traps air and adds richness and tender texture to the cookies.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough so the cookies rise and turn lighter.
Sugar
Sweetens the cookies and helps them brown lightly as they bake.
Chopped pecans
Add nutty flavor and a crunchy texture throughout the cookies.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture. Adding flour in stages and mixing just until combined keeps the dough from becoming tough, since overmixing develops gluten and makes cookies dense.

Swap the pecans

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, 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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