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Dessert

Ginger Snaps

A sweet ginger cookie made with molasses, butter, lard, sugar, flour, and egg whites, topped with powdered sugar icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and molasses are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,225 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. 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 saucepan, boil the molasses, sugar, butter, and lard for about 10 minutes.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in a little hot water and add the ginger.

  3. Once the mixture cools, add flour until the dough is stiff.

Roll and bake

  1. Roll out the dough as thin as possible and bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C).

Make the icing

  1. For the icing, beat the egg whites in a platter, gradually adding the powdered sugar until fully combined.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Molasses + gingertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Ginger + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 sweetness, dark color, and a chewy, moist character to the cookie.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor, and helps give the cookie a tender texture.
Lard
Adds fat that contributes to a tender, crisp texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to lighten the dough and promote browning.
Flour
Provides structure so the stiff dough can be rolled and holds its shape when baked.
Egg whites
Whipped with powdered sugar to form a stable, glossy icing.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough thin. Thin dough bakes through and dries into a crisp snap. Thick dough stays soft and cakey, so the cookie loses its characteristic crispness.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, molasses, flour, 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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