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Dessert

Clove Cookies

Clove cookies are sweet biscuits made with flour, sugar, butter, cloves, and molasses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and molasses are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,225 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Clove Cookies

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, butter, and cloves.

  2. Add molasses gradually until the mixture is wet enough to roll out very thin.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into desired shapes.

  2. Bake in a hot oven at 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. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Clove + molassestop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,671 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the dough as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cookies brown.
Butter
Adds fat that gives the cookies tenderness and rich flavor.
Cloves
Provides the warm, spicy aroma that defines the cookie.
Molasses
Moistens the dough so it can be rolled out and adds depth to the flavor.

The step that matters

Adding the molasses gradually. Too much liquid makes the dough sticky and hard to roll thin, while too little leaves it crumbly. Adding it slowly lets you stop once the dough is just workable.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Clovethe original

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