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Dessert

Molasses Snaps

Molasses snaps are crisp cookies made with molasses, sugar, ginger, clove, cinnamon, butter, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Molasses 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 the dough

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

  2. In a bowl, mix molasses, sugar, ginger, clove, cinnamon, and melted butter.

  3. Add baking soda and stir until well combined.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough very thin on a floured surface.

  2. Cut into desired shapes and place on a baking sheet.

  3. Bake 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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + clovetop 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
Provides dark sweetness, moisture, and chewy-crisp texture in the snaps.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the snaps brown and crisp as they bake.
Melted butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness, and helps the dough hold together.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to lighten the dough and promote browning.
Ginger
Contributes the warm, spicy aroma that defines the snaps.

The step that matters

Roll the dough very thin. Thin dough dries out and crisps through during baking. Thick pieces stay soft in the middle and can spread unevenly, so the snaps lose their crisp texture.

Swap the ginger

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

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

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