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Dessert

Ginger Snaps

A ginger cookie made with sorghum molasses, butter, lard, flour, ginger, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sorghum and flour share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 99 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Ginger Snaps

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. Boil the sorghum molasses for one minute, then remove from heat and add the butter and lard mixture.

  2. Allow the mixture to cool to lukewarm, then add the sifted dry ingredients.

  3. Roll the dough out on a floured surface as thin as possible.

Shape and bake

  1. Cut into fancy shapes or plain, and bake in a moderately heated 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. Sorghum + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together99 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sorghum + gingertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together31 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Molasses + gingertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Sorghum molasses
Adds sweetness, depth of flavor, and moisture to the dough.
Butter and lard mixed
Provides fat for tenderness and a crisp, short texture.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cookie together as it bakes.
Ginger
Supplies the spicy, aromatic flavor that defines the cookie.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to lighten the dough and help it spread and brown.
Baking powder
Adds lift so the cookies rise slightly and stay light.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough as thin as possible. Thin dough bakes quickly and evenly into crisp cookies, while thick dough stays soft and cakey in the middle. Chilling or working quickly helps keep the dough manageable.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Clovefits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sorghum, molasses, 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.

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