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Dessert

Ginger Drop Cookies

Cookies made with brown sugar, butter, eggs, ginger, cloves, cinnamon, molasses, hot water, baking soda, 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 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 ↓

Ginger Drop 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, mix together the brown sugar, butter, eggs, ginger, cloves, and cinnamon until well combined.

  2. In another bowl, mix the molasses, hot water, and baking soda until dissolved.

  3. Add the molasses mixture to the sugar mixture and stir well.

  4. Gradually add the sifted flour, mixing until fully incorporated.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the dough onto buttered baking sheets.

  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 + 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. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cookies brown and stay soft.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and rich flavor.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure as they set in the oven.
Molasses
Adds deep sweetness, moisture, and the dark color and flavor typical of ginger cookies.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas that helps the cookies rise and spread.
Sifted flour
Provides the structure that sets the cookies as they bake.

The step that matters

Dissolving the baking soda in the molasses mixture. Baking soda must fully dissolve and react with the acidic molasses to leaven the dough evenly; undissolved soda can leave bitter spots and uneven rising.

Swap the ginger

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

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

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