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Dessert

Molasses Lemon Cookies

Cookies made with molasses, sugar, sour cream or milk, butter or lard, baking soda, cloves, ginger, lemon rind, eggs, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Molasses Lemon Cookies

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, combine molasses, sugar, sour cream or milk, butter or lard, baking soda, ground cloves, ground ginger, grated lemon rind, and eggs. Mix well until smooth.

  2. Gradually add flour until the dough is stiff.

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.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Adds dark colour, moisture and a deep, slightly bitter sweetness to the cookies.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cookies brown as they bake.
Butter or lard
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour in the dough.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure as the cookies set.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses and sour cream to lighten the dough and help it rise.
Flour
Provides the structure that stiffens the dough so it can be rolled and cut.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until the dough is stiff. Adding too much flour at once or too little overall changes the texture. Enough flour gives a dough firm enough to roll and cut, while too much makes cookies dry and tough.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, sugar, cream, butter, clove, ginger, egg. 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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