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Dessert

Ginger Nuts

A small, round ginger cookie made with flour, butter, sugar, spices, and molasses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 Nuts

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, combine flour, butter, sugar, and spices.

  2. Add molasses and mix until a dough forms.

  3. Knead the dough until smooth.

  4. Let the dough rest in a cool place for a short time.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into small, round cakes about the size of a coin.

  2. Place them on slightly buttered baking sheets.

  3. Brush the tops with a mixture of thin molasses and water.

  4. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until done.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough and cakes together.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a crumbly texture in the baked cakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the cakes brown in the oven.
Molasses
Binds the dough and adds moisture, sweetness, and deep flavor.
Ground ginger
Supplies the warm, spicy aroma that defines the cake.

The step that matters

Bake until done. Ginger nuts are small, so they can go from done to over-browned quickly. Molasses contains sugar that darkens fast in heat, so watch the color and stop baking once the cakes are set and firm.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, allspice, clove, cinnamon, molasses. 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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