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Dessert

Fruit Snaps

Fruit snaps are sweet, spiced dough cookies with raisins, currants, and molasses baked until lightly browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Fruit Snaps

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the raisins, currants, molasses, and eggs; mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, ginger, cloves, cinnamon, and allspice.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, mixing until a soft dough forms.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough on a floured surface to your desired thickness.

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

  3. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until lightly browned.

  4. Allow to cool before storing in an airtight container.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air, giving the snaps a light, tender structure and rich flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and, creamed with butter, helps give the snaps their crisp texture and browning.
Molasses
Adds moisture, deep sweetness and a dark color to the dough.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to lift the dough and aid spreading and browning.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and natural sweetness throughout the dough.

The step that matters

Bake until lightly browned, not longer. Because the dough is sugar- and molasses-rich, it browns quickly and turns hard and bitter once overbaked. Pulling the snaps when they are just lightly browned keeps them crisp but not burnt, and they firm further as they cool.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, raisin, sugar, ginger, clove, cinnamon, allspice. 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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