Name: Famous Ginger Snaps
Ingredients: 3 pounds all-purpose flour; 1½ cups brown sugar; 1¼ cups shortening (⅔ cup butter and ⅓ cup lard); 1 pint thick molasses; ½ pint sour milk; 1 teaspoon baking soda; 2 tablespoons ground ginger; 1 teaspoon ground cloves

Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Famous 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

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the dough

In a large bowl, mix together the flour, brown sugar, shortening, molasses, sour milk, baking soda, ginger, and cloves until well combined.
Do not add any more milk or flour.

Shape and bake

Roll the dough very thin and cut into desired shapes.
Place on a baking sheet and 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.

Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,038 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,225 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Molasses + clovetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,483 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

All-purpose flour: Provides the structure that holds the dough together after baking.
Brown sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the cookies brown and firm up.
Shortening: Adds fat that tenderizes the dough and keeps the texture short.
Molasses: Adds moisture, deep sweetness and the dark color of the cookies.
Sour milk: Its acidity reacts with the baking soda and adds a slight tang.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acid in the sour milk and molasses to lift and lighten the dough.

The step that matters

Roll the dough very thin. Thin dough dries out and sets into a crisp snap as it bakes, while thick dough stays soft and cakey in the middle.

Swap the clove

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

Cinnamonfits better
Cardamomfits better
Nutmegfits about as well
Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, molasses, milk, ginger. 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.