Skip to main content
Baking

Gin Gee Snaps

A ginger-flavored biscuit made with sugar, treacle, butter or lard, vinegar, ginger, baking soda, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Gin Gee Snaps

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix sugar, treacle, and butter or lard.

  2. Add vinegar, ginger, and baking soda, then mix well.

  3. Gradually add flour until the dough is firm enough to roll out.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into shapes.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cookies brown and crisp as they bake.
Treacle
Adds deep sweetness, dark colour and moisture to the dough.
Butter or lard
Provides fat for tenderness and richness in the dough.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that reacts with baking soda to help the cookies rise and soften.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the dough to produce gas for rising and spreading.
Flour
Provides structure so the dough holds its shape when rolled and cut.

The step that matters

Adding the flour. Flour should be added gradually until the dough is firm enough to roll. Too little leaves a sticky dough that is hard to cut, while too much makes the cookies dry and tough because the gluten and starch become overworked and absorb too much liquid.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Jalapenofits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, vinegar, 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.

You might also like

Delicate CakeDelicate Cake246 recipesBoiled FrostingBoiled Frosting69 recipesCitron CakeCitron Cake68 recipesScotch CakeScotch Cake63 recipes