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Dessert

Ginger Snaps

A sweet ginger cookie made with sugar, molasses, eggs, vinegar, cinnamon, ginger, baking soda, and flour.

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

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, mix sugar, molasses, eggs, vinegar, cinnamon, ginger, and baking soda until well combined.

  2. Gradually add flour until the dough is firm enough to roll.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into desired shapes.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

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. 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 dark color, moisture and a deep, slightly bitter sweetness to the dough.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and moisture to the cookies.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic vinegar and molasses to lift the dough and help it spread and brown.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps it brown and crisp as it bakes.
Flour
Provides the structure that lets the dough be rolled and cut into shapes.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. Baking long enough sets the structure and browns the sugars so the snaps turn crisp. Stopping early leaves them soft, while over-baking makes them dry and bitter.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, molasses, egg, vinegar, 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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