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Dessert

Ginger Snaps

A sweet, spiced cookie made with molasses, sugar, butter, baking soda, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Ginger Snaps

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. Combine molasses, sugar, and butter in a saucepan and boil.

  2. Remove from heat and add baking soda, ginger, cinnamon, and cloves.

  3. Stir in enough flour to form a very stiff dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough very thin.

  2. Cut into desired shapes and place on a baking sheet.

  3. 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. 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, slightly bitter sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the cookies brown and crisp as they bake.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor, helping the cookies spread and set.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses acid to lighten the dough and encourage spreading and browning.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the stiff dough together and sets during baking.

The step that matters

Roll out the dough very thin. Thin dough bakes through and turns crisp; thick dough stays soft and cakey in the middle. Because the dough is very stiff, it needs patient, even rolling to avoid cracks.

Swap the ginger

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

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

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