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Dessert

Crumb Cookies

Cookies made with butter, sugar, egg, milk, bread crumbs, flour, baking powder, spices, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Crumb Cookies

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the unbeaten egg and cream again.

  3. Mix in the milk and bread crumbs.

  4. Blend all the dry ingredients together and add to the mixture.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough out as thin as possible, sprinkling a little sugar on the dough and rolling it in.

  2. Cut into shapes and bake on a greased sheet in a hot oven (400°F / 200°C) until lightly browned.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with sugar to add fat and tenderness to the cookie.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the cookies brown when baked.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds structure as it sets.
Bread crumbs
Provide the main body of the cookie and a toasted, crisp-edged texture.
Flour
Adds structure so the dough holds its shape when cut.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven so the cookies rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough thin. Rolling the dough as thin as possible keeps the cookies crisp rather than cakey. Thick dough traps moisture and rises more, so it bakes soft and puffy inside instead of crisp.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

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