Skip to main content
Dessert

Ginger Cookies

A ginger cookie dough made with lard, molasses, eggs, spices, and flour, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Ginger Cookies

Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Ginger Cookies

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, mix the lard, molasses, and beaten eggs with the salt and spices.

  2. Add the baking soda to a cup of flour and stir it into the mixture.

  3. Gradually add the remaining flour until a stiff dough forms.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough very thin and cut into desired shapes.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Molasses + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Molasses + gingertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Lard
Adds fat that keeps the cookies tender and short in texture.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and deep flavor, and its acidity reacts with the baking soda.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure as they set during baking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas that lifts the dough and aids browning.
Flour
Builds the structure that turns the mixture into a stiff, shapeable dough.
Ginger
Provides the warm, spicy aroma that defines the cookie.

The step that matters

Roll the dough very thin. Thickness controls how the cookie bakes. Thin dough dries out and turns crisp, while thick dough stays soft inside. Uneven thickness makes some pieces burn while others stay underbaked.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, egg, cinnamon, 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.

More ginger cookies recipes

Molasses 14Soft 9Wakefield 3 See all 179 →

You might also like

Molasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesGinger CakeGinger Cake93 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipes