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Dessert

Ginger Cookies I

A sweet dough made with butter, sugar, molasses, vinegar, baking soda, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, eggs, and flour, baked into cookies.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Ginger Cookies I

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a saucepan, combine butter, sugar, molasses, vinegar, baking soda, ginger, cinnamon, and cloves.

  2. Stir and bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Allow the mixture to cool, then add the beaten eggs.

  4. Gradually mix in enough flour to form a stiff dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough very thin and cut into desired shapes.

  2. Bake until crisp or soft, depending on cooking time.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Adds fat for tenderness and rich flavor in the cookie.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep sweet flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic vinegar and molasses to help the cookies rise and spread.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure as the cookies set.
Flour
Provides the structure that turns the mixture into a stiff, rollable dough.

The step that matters

Allow the mixture to cool before adding the eggs. If the hot mixture meets the beaten eggs, they can scramble and fail to blend smoothly, leaving an uneven dough. Cooling first keeps the eggs fluid so they mix evenly into the dough.

Swap the ginger

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

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

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