Skip to main content
Dessert

Peanut Butter Cookies

Peanut butter cookies made with peanut butter, shortening, sugar, egg, flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and sour milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Peanut Butter Cookies

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Cream together the peanut butter, shortening, and sugar.

  2. Add the well-beaten egg and re-cream the mixture.

  3. Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt, then add to the creamed mixture along with the sour milk. Mix everything well.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough on a floured surface as thin as possible, rolling sugar on top to create a sugar crust.

  2. Cut into fancy shapes and bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Peanut + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,048 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Peanut butter
Adds rich flavor and tender, crumbly texture to the cookie.
Shortening
Provides fat that keeps the cookies tender and helps them hold their shape.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the cookies brown as they bake.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds structure as the cookies set.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cookies as the dough sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cookies rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough as thin as possible. Thin dough bakes quickly and evenly, so the cookies turn crisp and golden before they dry out or burn. Thick dough can stay doughy in the center. Rolling it on a floured surface also keeps it from sticking, which would tear the shapes.

Swap the peanut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Milletfits better
  4. Peanutthe original

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

Peanut CandyPeanut Candy82 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes