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Dessert

Ginger-snaps

A sweet cookie made with molasses, brown sugar, butter, spices, baking soda, and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Ginger-snaps

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

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

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, mix together the molasses, brown sugar, and butter or lard until well combined.

  2. Add the cloves, cinnamon, and ground ginger to the mixture.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in the warm water and add it to the mixture.

  4. Stir until everything is well incorporated.

Bake

  1. Roll the dough into small balls and place them on a baking sheet.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven until crisp.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 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 sweetness, moisture and deep flavour, and helps the snaps brown.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cookies brown and crisp as they bake.
Butter or salted lard
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the dough.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to lift the dough and help it spread.
Ground ginger
Provides the main spicy aroma that defines the snaps.

The step that matters

Bake in the preheated oven until crisp. Ginger snaps firm up as they cool, so underbaking leaves them soft and chewy, while overbaking makes them bitter and dark. Watch the colour and edges closely.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, sugar, butter, clove, cinnamon. 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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