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Dessert

Bran Cookies

A sweet cookie made with bran, flour, molasses, butter, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Bran Cookies

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Cream the butter, sugar, and egg together until light.

  2. Add the molasses to the creamed mixture.

  3. Sift the flour, baking soda, nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, and salt together.

  4. Add the dry ingredients alternately with the sour milk to the creamed mixture.

  5. Finally, add the bran and knead the dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Place the dough on a floured board and roll it very thin.

  2. Cut into shapes and bake.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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 trap air and add richness and tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cookies and helps them brown while creaming with the butter.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds structure and richness.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets the cookie shape.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to lift and lighten the dough.
Dark molasses
Adds moisture, deep sweetness, and color to the dough.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough very thin. Thin dough bakes into crisp cookies, while thicker dough stays soft and cakey. Rolling it evenly also keeps the cookies baking at the same rate.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, nutmeg, egg, molasses, cinnamon, clove):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Fennelfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, nutmeg, egg, molasses, cinnamon, clove. 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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