Skip to main content
Dessert

Ginger Snaps

A crisp ginger cookie made with butter, treacle, baking soda, salt, ginger, and flour.

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

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Ginger Snaps

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Melt the butter with the treacle in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. Mix in the baking soda, salt, ginger, and enough flour to make a soft dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough thin and cut into rounds.

  2. Place on a floured baking sheet and bake at 300°F (150°C) for 25 minutes.

Store

  1. Store in a tightly covered tin to improve with age.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Ginger + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + gingertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,152 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Adds fat that gives the snaps a tender, short texture.
Treacle
Provides sweetness, moisture and a dark, rich flavour.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic treacle to lift the dough and help it spread and brown.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the soft dough together after baking.
Ground ginger
Supplies the warm, spicy aroma that defines the snap.

The step that matters

Baking time and rolling thickness. Rolling the dough thin and baking for the stated time matters because thin pieces dry and crisp, while thicker ones stay soft. Overbaking darkens sugars quickly and can make the snaps bitter.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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.

You might also like

Ginger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesGinger CakeGinger Cake93 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesSoft Ginger CakeSoft Ginger Cake56 recipes