Skip to main content
Dessert

Ginger Snaps

A ginger cookie made with molasses, butter, sugar, ginger, red pepper, eggs, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Ginger and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,800 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Ginger Snaps

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. In a saucepan, combine molasses and butter over medium heat until boiling.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in sugar and ginger until well mixed.

  3. Beat the eggs and add them to the mixture, stirring well.

  4. Gradually add flour until the dough is firm enough to roll.

Shape and bake

  1. On a floured surface, roll out small pieces of dough until thin.

  2. Cut into shapes and bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until dark brown.

  3. Store in a tin box.

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. Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Molasses + gingertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  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

Molasses
Adds dark color, rich flavor and moisture, and helps the cookies brown.
Butter
Provides fat for tenderness and flavor, and helps the dough hold together.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and promotes browning and crisp edges during baking.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure as they set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the structure of the dough so it can be rolled and cut.

The step that matters

Bake until dark brown. Baking only until lightly colored leaves the cookies soft and underbaked. Sugar and molasses brown deeply in the oven, so the cookies need to reach a dark brown to set into a crisp snap.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

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

Ginger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesMolasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesGinger CakeGinger Cake93 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipes