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Dessert

Ginger Snaps

A ginger-flavored cookie made with butter, lard, brown sugar, syrup, flour, and spices, baked until crisp.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Ginger Snaps

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Dissolve the baking soda in a little milk.

  2. Melt the butter, lard, brown sugar, and syrup together in a saucepan.

  3. Once cooled, add the dissolved baking soda and the remaining ingredients.

  4. Add more flour as needed to achieve a stiff dough.

Shape and bake

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

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) 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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Baking soda
Reacts to lift and lighten the dough, helping the cookies spread and brown.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the dough into a stiff, cuttable form.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and tenderness, and helps the cookies crisp as they bake.
Syrup
Adds sweetness and moisture, and promotes browning and a chewy-crisp texture.
Ground ginger
Provides the aroma and spicy flavour that defines the cookie.

The step that matters

Roll the dough very thin. Thin dough bakes quickly and crisps evenly; thick dough stays soft in the centre and can burn at the edges before it sets.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, cinnamon, sugar, flour, syrup, milk):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cinnamon, sugar, flour, syrup, milk. 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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