Skip to main content
Dessert

Lepp Kuchen or German Cookies

A buttery, nutty cookie dough made with butter, lard, whiskey, spices, nuts, anise seed, and flour, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Lepp Kuchen or German 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.

Make the dough

  1. Cream butter, lard, whiskey, and salt together.

  2. Add spices, chopped nuts, and anise seed, then mix in flour to form a stiff dough.

  3. Let dough stand overnight.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out dough and cut into desired shapes.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

  3. Brush cookies with sweet milk and sprinkle sugar before baking for a lighter texture.

  4. Optionally spread beaten egg white on top and sprinkle sugar for decoration.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Nuts + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Adds richness and a tender crumb through its fat and flavor.
Lard
Shortens the dough, giving a tender, crisp texture.
All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the stiff dough its structure.
Chopped nuts
Add texture and a toasty, rich flavor to the cookies.
Anise seed
Contributes a distinctive licorice-like aroma.

The step that matters

Let the dough stand overnight. Resting lets the flour fully hydrate and the fats firm up, which makes the stiff dough easier to roll evenly and helps the cut shapes hold their form in the oven.

Swap the anise

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, nuts, flour, milk, sugar, egg. 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