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Dessert

Aunt Susan Hauer's Ginger Nuts

A sweet, spiced cookie made with molasses, brown sugar, butter, orange peel, ginger, cinnamon, allspice, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Aunt Susan Hauer's Ginger Nuts

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. In a large bowl, combine molasses, brown sugar, and butter.

  2. Add grated orange peel, ginger, cinnamon, and allspice; mix well.

  3. Gradually add flour until the dough is stiff enough to handle.

Shape and bake

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

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until done.

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. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Orange + gingertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Adds deep sweetness, dark color, and moisture that keeps the dough tender.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cookies brown during baking.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture in the baked cookies.
Flour
Provides structure so the stiff dough can be rolled and hold its cut shapes.
Ground ginger
Supplies the warm, spicy aroma that defines the cookie.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until the dough is stiff enough to handle. Flour absorbs liquid from the molasses and butter and builds structure. Adding it all at once can make the dough hard to mix evenly, while too little leaves it sticky and hard to roll thin and cut cleanly.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, sugar, butter, ginger, cinnamon, allspice, 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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