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Dessert

Cookies Without Egus

Cookies made without eggs, using sugar, butter, baking soda, cream of tartar, water, nutmeg, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Cookies Without Egus

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.

Prepare

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

Make and shape the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix together the sugar, cream of tartar, butter, baking soda, and water.

  2. Add nutmeg to taste.

  3. Gradually add flour until the dough is workable.

  4. Roll out the dough and cut it into your preferred shapes.

Bake

  1. Place the cookies on a baking sheet and bake until 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. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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 fat, which gives the cookies tenderness and a rich flavor.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that reacts with baking soda to help the cookies rise and stay light.
Baking soda
Releases carbon dioxide when combined with acidic cream of tartar, helping the cookies rise.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cookies brown and crisp as they bake.
Flour
Provides structure, setting the cookies as the dough is worked and baked.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until the dough is workable. Adding flour too quickly can make the dough stiff and dry, while too little leaves it sticky and hard to shape. Adding it gradually lets you reach a dough that holds its shape without becoming tough.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, butter, 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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