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Ginger Cookies

A sweet cookie made with sugar, molasses, lard, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, boiling water, and flour.

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

Why it works: Cinnamon and ginger 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

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the sugar, molasses, and lard together until well combined.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in the boiling water and add it to the mixture.

  3. Stir in the cinnamon and ginger.

  4. Add flour gradually, using as little as possible to achieve a dough consistency.

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. Cinnamon + gingertop 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. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 moisture, dark color, and a deep, sweet flavor to the dough.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the cookies and carries flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with molasses's acidity and heat to produce gas, helping the cookies rise and spread.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps give the cookies browning and a crisp edge.

The step that matters

Adding the flour. Too much flour makes the dough stiff and the cookies dense and dry. Adding it gradually and stopping at a workable consistency keeps the texture tender.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

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

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