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Dessert

Ginger Snaps

A ginger-flavored cookie made with brown sugar, molasses, shortening, ginger, egg, baking soda, water, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and molasses 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Mix together brown sugar, molasses, shortening, ginger, egg, baking soda dissolved in warm water, and enough flour to form a stiff dough.

  2. Place the dough in the refrigerator overnight.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough very thin and shape with a cookie cutter.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) without greasing the pans.

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. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture and a rich, slightly bitter sweetness to the dough.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cookies brown and stay tender.
Shortening
Provides fat that gives the cookies tenderness and a crisp texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to lift the dough and help it spread and brown.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds structure as it sets in the oven.

The step that matters

Roll the dough very thin. Thin dough bakes quickly and becomes crisp; thick dough stays soft and cakey in the middle. Chilling overnight firms the fat so the thin dough holds its shape when cut.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, molasses, 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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