I could live very nicely if I never again heard some chef or cooking teacher repeat “cooking is an art, baking is a science.” They commonly follow-up the statement with how cooking uses recipes and baking uses formulas, as if the name given to the preparation prescription separates science from art. The actual quote is generally credited to a 1967 King Arthur Flour Company catalog, although I haven’t seen the actual catalog.

is credited to Sir Malcolm Alexander Morris in The Book of Health (1883). I think Morris’ whole quote is quite instructive.

And of course there is the corollary.

In 1949, Jack Myer, an application engineer for the Brown Instruments Division of the Minneapolis-Honeywell Regulator Company of Philadelphia wrote in the Baker’s Digest

I can agree with both Morris and Myer, but I find the anonymous author of the flour catalog a bit extreme. I do not think the separation of cooking and baking, or the explanation, is that simple.

I consider myself more of a cook than a baker, though I can muddle through with both. I find the science of cooking easier to comprehend than the science of baking, even though the latter’s science is probably less complicated.

I cook every day, I only bake occasionally. In some ways this is strange because, with my science and engineering background, I am probably more comfortable with the “precise” measurements of baking versus the approximations of cooking. By this point in my life I have enough experience to let my inner navigational controls drive my cooking, but I still need a calibrated GPS for baking.

On October 14th, 2012, there was a short posting on the food blog Ideas in Food titled Arnhem Biscuits. (I already knew Arnhem as a stop along the train route from Amsterdam to Nijmegen, a run I made many times in the 1990s. It was also the site of a famous World War II battle in September 1944. And biscuits, or course, is the British term for cookies.) The blog linked to a 2008 posting at the King Arthur website called Sparkle-icious. This, in turn, linked to a recipe for some cookies called Crystal Diamonds. And these cookies are very similar to Arnhemse Meisjes, literally “girls from the city of Arnhem.” After making the rounds through the various websites, I decided that even though baking isn’t my strong suit, I’d give these a try.

Starting with the recipe from King Arthur, I first reduced the ingredient quantities by half. Since my goal was mignardise, my cookies would be only half the size of those in the recipe, I still had the potential of producing up to 10 dozen cookies in a single batch, enough for more than a few years of dinner guests. Making half the original recipe produced 6 dozen finished cookies, each about 2 cm (0.8 in) per side after a generous sacrificing of all the less than perfect ones and the raw dough scraps to the tasting gods.

After making the recipe all the way through, I don’t think halving it further would produce successful results. There would be too little dough for the mixer to properly incorporate the butter.

The rolled out and cut dough can be quite soft. If possible, place it in the refrigerator to firm it again before attempting to transfer it baking sheets.