Name: Ginger Cookies
Ingredients: 1 cup molasses; 1 cup brown sugar; ½ cup shortening; 3 eggs; 1 tablespoon ginger; 2 teaspoons baking soda; 1 teaspoon black pepper; flour to make a soft dough

Why it works: Ginger and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,800 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Ginger Cookies

Ingredients

Directions

Boil together the molasses, brown sugar, and shortening until combined.
Let the mixture cool.
Add the eggs, ginger, baking soda, and black pepper to the cooled mixture.
Gradually add flour until a soft dough forms.

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.

Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,800 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,225 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Molasses + gingertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,116 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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

Swap the ginger

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

Cinnamonfits better
Nutmegfits better
Allspicefits about as well
Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, sugar, egg, pepper, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.