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Dessert

Ginger Snaps

A crisp ginger cookie made with sugar, molasses, lard, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Ginger Snaps

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Mix sugar, molasses, lard, and water until well combined.

  2. Add salt, baking soda, ginger, cloves, and cinnamon; stir until smooth.

  3. Gradually add flour until the dough is manageable.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough on a floured surface and cut into desired shapes.

  2. Place on a baking sheet and bake at 400°F (200°C) until crisp.

  3. Cool on a wire rack before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Molasses
Adds dark sweetness, moisture, and a deep flavor that helps the cookies brown.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas, lightening the dough as it bakes.
Lard
Provides fat that tenderizes the dough and helps it crisp as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and promotes browning and crispness as it bakes.
Flour
Provides structure so the dough can be rolled and cut into shapes.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until the dough is manageable. Adding too much flour at once or too much overall makes the dough stiff and dry, producing hard, tough snaps. Stopping when the dough is just workable keeps it tender enough to roll while still holding its shape.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, molasses, clove, cinnamon, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, molasses, clove, cinnamon, 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.

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