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Dessert

Ginger Snaps

A sweet, spiced cookie made with butter, lard, sugar, molasses, spices, eggs, baking soda, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. 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. Warm butter, lard, sugar, and molasses in a saucepan.

  2. Remove from heat and add grated nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, and eggs.

  3. Stir in baking soda and enough flour to form a dough.

  4. If desired, mix in chopped walnuts.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into desired shapes.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until crisp.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Adds deep sweetness and moisture, and contributes to the dark color and chewy-crisp texture.
Butter
Adds fat for rich flavor and tenderness in the cookie.
Lard
Adds fat that helps the cookies stay crisp and tender.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to lift and spread the dough as it bakes.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together and sets as it bakes.

The step that matters

Warm the butter, lard, sugar, and molasses without overheating. Gently warming the fats and sugar dissolves the sugar and blends the fats evenly, which helps the dough mix smoothly. Overheating can cause the eggs added later to scramble or the dough to become greasy and uneven.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

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