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Dessert

Ginger Snaps

A sweet ginger cookie made with butter, sugar, molasses, ginger, and flour, baked until hard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. 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.

Make the dough

  1. Beat together the butter and sugar until creamy.

  2. Add the molasses, cream of tartar, baking soda, milk, and yellow ginger; mix well.

  3. Gradually add flour until a stiff dough forms.

  4. Roll the dough to about ¼ inch thick.

Cut and bake

  1. Cut with a small glass and place on a baking sheet.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until hard.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Adds fat that creams with sugar to create tenderness and richness in the cookie.
Molasses
Provides moisture, deep flavour, and dark colour while keeping the cookies chewy.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses and cream of tartar to lift and spread the dough.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that works with baking soda to help the cookies rise and stay light.
Flour
Provides structure so the dough holds its shape when rolled and cut.

The step that matters

Bake until hard. Baking only until the edges are set and the surface is firm matters because ginger snaps keep crisping as they cool. Overbaking can make them bitter and too brittle, while underbaking leaves them soft and doughy in the centre.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Jalapenofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, molasses, cream, milk, 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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