Skip to main content
Dessert

Plain Cookies

Plain cookies made with butter, milk, sugar, flour, egg, baking powder, nutmeg, and optional caraway seeds or nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and caraway match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 200 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Plain Cookies

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately quick oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Beat the butter until creamy.

  2. Gradually add the sugar and beat until combined.

  3. Lightly beat the egg and add it to the butter and sugar mixture, then beat again.

  4. Stir in the milk.

  5. Sift in the flour, adding the baking powder and nutmeg with the last half of the flour.

  6. Mix thoroughly and turn out onto a floured surface.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll to ⅛ inch thick, cut out shapes, and bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 8 to 12 minutes.

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 + carawaytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together200 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Flour + carawaytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. 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

Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and gives the cookies a tender, rich texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cookies and, beaten with butter, helps create a light structure.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds structure and richness to the cookies.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the dough as it bakes and sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven, helping the cookies rise and become lighter.

The step that matters

Sifting the flour with the baking powder and nutmeg. Adding the baking powder with the last half of the flour spreads it evenly through the dough, so the cookies rise uniformly instead of in patches or with bitter pockets.

Swap the caraway

The recipe marks caraway as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, milk, sugar, flour, egg, nutmeg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Carawaythe original
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Clovefits about as well

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

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes