Skip to main content
Dessert

Ginger Nuts

A sweet baked treat made with molasses, cloves, sugar, ginger, flour, and butter.

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

Why it works: Clove and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

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, ground cloves, sugar, and ground ginger.

  2. Gradually add flour until a batter forms.

  3. Melt the butter and mix it into the batter until well combined.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the mixture into small balls or drop onto a baking sheet.

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

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 + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Molasses + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture and a rich, sweet flavor to the dough.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the dough and helps the cookies brown and stay tender.
Flour
Provides structure so the batter holds its shape while baking.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cookies brown and crisp as they bake.
Ground ginger
Provides the warm, spicy flavor that defines the cookies.

The step that matters

Adding flour gradually until the batter forms. Too much flour at once can leave dry pockets or make the dough stiff, while too little leaves it too loose to hold its shape. Adding it slowly lets you judge the texture and stop once the batter is right.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, sugar, ginger, flour, butter. 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 recipesMolasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesGinger CakeGinger Cake93 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipes