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Dessert

Cheap Ginger Cookies

A simple ginger cookie made with molasses, lard, ginger, salt, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Molasses and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,116 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cheap Ginger Cookies

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

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

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix molasses, lard, ginger, and salt.

  2. Gradually add flour until the mixture can be stirred.

  3. Roll the dough very thin.

Bake

  1. Cut into desired shapes and bake quickly 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. Molasses + gingertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Ginger + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and moisture to the dough.
Lard
Provides fat that keeps the cookies tender and short.
Flour
Gives the dough structure so it can be rolled and cut.
Ginger
Adds the main spiced aroma and flavor.

The step that matters

Bake quickly until golden. Thin dough heats through fast, and the sugars in molasses brown quickly. Overbaking turns the cookies dark and bitter, so watch them closely near the end.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, 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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