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Dessert

Ginger Snaps

A sweet cookie made with sugar, molasses, butter, ginger, cinnamon, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Ginger Snaps

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. In a large pot, combine sugar, molasses, butter, water, ginger, cinnamon, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Remove from heat and let it cool slightly.

  4. Gradually add flour until the dough is soft enough to handle.

Bake

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C) and bake the cookies quickly until golden.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 color, moisture, and a deep, sweet flavor to the cookies.
Butter
Provides fat for tenderness and richness in the dough.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cookies brown and crisp at the edges.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to help the cookies rise and spread.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that supports rising and stabilizes the leavening reaction.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cookies once baked.

The step that matters

Adding the flour. Flour should be added gradually so the dough becomes soft but not stiff. Adding too much flour at once makes the cookies dense and dry, while too little leaves the dough too sticky to shape.

Swap the ginger

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

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

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