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Dessert

Sour Cream Ginger Cookies

A cookie made with sour cream, lard, molasses, brown sugar, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, and flour.

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 ↓

Sour Cream Ginger Cookies

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 large bowl, mix together the sour cream, lard, molasses, and brown sugar until well combined.

  2. Add the ground ginger, salt, baking soda, cinnamon, and cloves. Mix until incorporated.

  3. Gradually add flour until the dough is manageable and can be rolled out.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough to a thickness of about ¼ inch and cut into desired shapes.

  2. Place the cookies on a baking sheet and bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°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. 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. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sour cream
Adds moisture and acidity that keeps the cookies tender and reacts with the baking soda.
Lard
Provides fat that makes the cookies tender and short in texture.
Molasses
Adds moisture, deep sweetness, and dark color to the cookies.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cookies brown.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream and molasses to lift and lighten the dough.
Ground ginger
Contributes the main warm, spicy aroma and flavor of the cookies.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until the dough is manageable. Adding too much flour makes the dough stiff and dry, producing tough, dense cookies. Adding it slowly lets you stop once the dough can be rolled without sticking.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, molasses, sugar, cinnamon, clove, 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.

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