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Dessert

Ginger Snaps

A sweet, spicy cookie made with butter, molasses, brown sugar, ginger, baking soda, salt, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Molasses and sugar 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

Make the dough

  1. In a porcelain saucepan, combine molasses, brown sugar, butter, ginger, baking soda, and salt.

  2. Heat the mixture on the stove, stirring until it boils, then maintain boiling for 5 minutes.

  3. Pour the mixture into a large bowl and quickly stir in enough flour to form a stiff dough.

  4. Mold the dough with your hands, as it will be too stiff for a spoon.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough very thin on a floured surface.

  2. Cut into small rounds, place on shallow pans, and bake immediately.

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. Molasses + sugartop 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

Flour
Builds the structure that turns the mixture into a stiff dough.
Molasses
Adds dark sweetness, moisture, and a deep flavor to the dough.
Butter
Adds fat that gives the cookies a tender texture and rich flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to lighten the dough and help the cookies spread and brown.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cookies brown.
Ground ginger
Provides the warm, spicy aroma that defines a ginger snap.

The step that matters

Boiling the mixture for 5 minutes. Boiling evaporates water and concentrates the sugars, so the dough firms up enough to hold its shape. Boiling too long can scorch the molasses and make the dough bitter and hard to handle.

Swap the ginger

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

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

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