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Dessert

French Ginger Cookies

A sweet cookie made with molasses, sugar, ginger, cinnamon, flour, and baking soda, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

French Ginger Cookies

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the dough

  1. Combine molasses, sugar, and shortening in a bowl.

  2. Stir the mixture until well blended.

  3. Dissolve the bicarbonate of soda in the pint of water.

  4. Add the dissolved bicarbonate of soda to the mixture.

  5. Stir to combine.

  6. Add the ginger, cinnamon, ground crumbs, and flour.

  7. Mix until a smooth dough forms.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough to about ½ inch thick.

  2. Cut the dough with a 2‑inch round cutter.

  3. Dip each cookie in granulated sugar.

  4. Place the cookies on sheet pans.

  5. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 10‑12 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Molasses + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,928 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

Molasses
Adds dark sweetness, moisture and a chewy texture to the dough.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together after mixing and baking.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses acidity to lift the cookies and help them spread and brown.
Ginger
Contributes the spicy aroma that defines the cookie.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the cookies brown at the edges.

The step that matters

Dissolve the bicarbonate of soda in the water before adding it. Dissolving the soda spreads it evenly through the dough so it reacts uniformly with the molasses acid. Clumps of undissolved soda can leave bitter, soapy spots and uneven rising.

Swap the ginger

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

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

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