Name: Ill Aunt Kittie's Cookies
Ingredients: 4 eggs; 2 cups sugar; 1 cup butter; ½ cup sweet milk; 2 teaspoons baking soda; 2 teaspoons cream of tartar; 1 nutmeg, grated; Flour, enough to handle

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 ↓

Ill Aunt Kittie's 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 the dough

Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a large bowl, beat the eggs and sugar together until well combined.
Add the butter and sweet milk, mixing until smooth.
Stir in the baking soda, cream of tartar, and grated nutmeg.
Gradually add flour until the dough is manageable.

Shape and bake

Roll out the dough and cut into desired shapes.
Place on a baking sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes or 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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 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

Eggs: Bind the dough and add richness and structure to the cookies.
Butter: Adds fat for tenderness and flavor, and helps the cookies brown.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to produce gas that lifts the dough.
Cream of tartar: Acidifies the dough so it reacts with baking soda, helping the cookies rise.
Sugar: Sweetens the cookies and helps them brown and stay tender.
Flour: Provides the structure that holds the dough together for shaping.

Swap the nutmeg

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

Nutmegthe original
Cinnamonfits about as well
Capersfits less well
Jalapenofits less well

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