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Dessert

Ginger Snaps

A sweet, spicy ginger cookie made with sugar, molasses, spices, brandy, lard, butter, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 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. In a large bowl, mix together the sugar, molasses, ginger, cloves, cinnamon, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Add the brandy, lard, butter, and eggs to the mixture and combine well.

Bake and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the dough onto a baking sheet.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

  3. Let cool before serving.

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. 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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure as the cookies set in the oven.
Molasses
Adds moisture, deep flavor, and dark color to the cookies.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the cookies brown during baking.
Lard
Adds fat that gives the cookies a tender texture.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavor, contributing to tenderness and spread.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. Sugar and molasses darken quickly, so the cookies can go from golden to burnt in a short time. Pull them once golden brown, since they firm up as they cool.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, molasses, clove, cinnamon, pepper, brandy, butter. 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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