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Sour Cream Cookies

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Sour Cream Cookies

Why it works: Butter and cream 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 ↓

Sour Cream Cookies

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cream the sugar and butter together.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in the sour cream and add it to the mixture.

  3. Add the salt, vanilla, and nutmeg.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking powder.

  5. Beat the eggs until light and mix them in after creaming the butter and sugar.

  6. Use just enough extra flour to roll out the dough thin.

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 + creamtop 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 + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Vanilla + nutmegtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, cream, vanilla, flour, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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