Skip to main content
Dessert

Brandy Snaps

A small sweet biscuit made with treacle, flour, butter, brown sugar, ginger, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Brandy Snaps

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Boil the treacle, brown sugar, and butter in a small saucepan.

  2. Once cooled slightly, stir in the flour, ginger, and lemon juice until well mixed.

Bake and shape

  1. Drop a teaspoonful of the mixture onto well-greased baking tins, leaving space for spreading.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

  3. Allow to cool for a minute before lifting off the tins.

  4. Roll the snaps on a rolling pin or shape into cornets.

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 + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

Treacle
Adds deep flavour and moisture, and helps the snaps brown and stay chewy.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the spread batter together as it sets.
Butter
Melts with the sugar to make the batter fluid and gives crisp, rich texture.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps it spread and caramelise to a golden colour.

The step that matters

Leave space between the spoonfuls of batter. The batter spreads widely and thins as it melts in the oven. Spacing the drops keeps them from merging into one sheet, and the snaps need room to spread into thin, even rounds.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, lemon. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesGinger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes