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Dessert

Ginger Snap

A sweet biscuit made with flour, sugar, treacle, butter, ginger, baking powder, baking soda, egg, and optional milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Ginger Snap

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. Mix the flour, sugar, treacle, and butter in a bowl until well combined.

  2. Add the baking powder, baking soda, ginger, and egg, then mix until smooth.

  3. If the dough is too dry, add milk as needed.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough thinly on a floured surface.

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

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

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the dough together as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cookies brown and crisp as they bake.
Treacle
Adds moisture, deep sweetness, and a rich flavour to the dough.
Butter
Adds fat that gives tenderness and flavour to the cookies.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cookies rise and lighten.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity in treacle to help the cookies spread, rise, and brown.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough thinly. Thin dough bakes evenly and crisps through, while thick dough stays soft in the middle and may not brown properly. Rolling on a floured surface also stops the dough sticking and tearing.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, egg, 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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