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Molasses Cookies

Cookies made with molasses, lard, butter, baking soda, lemon extract, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Molasses Cookies

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Molasses Cookies

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Combine molasses with lard and butter mixture in a saucepan.

  2. Boil the mixture.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in baking soda and lemon extract.

  4. Allow the mixture to cool, then gradually add flour until a dough forms.

Shape

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

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Molasses + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Molasses + buttertop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,123 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Molasses
Provides sweetness, dark color, and a rich, moist texture to the cookies.
Lard and butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a short, crisp texture in the finished cookies.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas, helping the cookies rise and spread.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together once it is added.

The step that matters

Stir in the baking soda and lemon extract off the heat. Baking soda reacts with acid in molasses and can foam vigorously when hot, so adding it off the heat and letting the mixture cool helps control the reaction before the dough is formed.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, butter, 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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