Ginger Snaps
1 cup molasses 1 teaspoon soda 1/2 cup sugar 1/2 cup butter 1 tablespoon ginger Gold Medal flour to roll very thin Mix molasses, sugar, ginger and butter, stir over the fire until the butter is melted, then stir in quickly 3 cups of Gold Medal flour in which has been sifted the pulverized soda. Knead the dough until it becomes smooth and set on ice, over night if possible. Roll as thin as pasteboard and bake in a quick oven.
A stiff, barely-sweetened molasses dough that depends entirely on being rolled thin and baked fast. The two instructions that matter are the overnight chill and the pasteboard thickness; skip either and you get soft cookies rather than snaps.
- Roll it truly thin"Thin as pasteboard" suggests something in the region of 1/16 inch. Anything thicker stays chewy in the middle and will not snap when cooled.
- Quick ovenRoughly 400–425F, the term being only approximate. At that heat pasteboard-thin dough bakes in a few minutes and scorches fast, so watch the first tray. Many bakers now work at 375–400F for a little more margin.
- How much flourThe ingredient list says only "flour to roll very thin" while the method specifies 3 cups. Three cups gives a dough that is workable but soft; expect to add flour during kneading and rolling until it holds a sheet without tearing.
- MolassesUse a mild unsulphured molasses, not blackstrap, which is more bitter than the ordinary table molasses of the period and will dominate the ginger.
- Pulverized sodaBaking soda then came in lumps that had to be crushed and sifted with the flour. Modern soda is already fine, but sift it with the flour anyway — undispersed soda leaves soapy brown spots.
- SaltNo salt is listed; butter of the period was commonly salted. With unsalted butter add about 1/4 teaspoon.
- The chill is not optionalThe chill -- "Set on ice" means chilling the dough thoroughly, overnight if you can, as the recipe allows. A warm dough with this much butter and molasses cannot be rolled thin; cold, it handles like pastry. Roll one quarter at a time and keep the rest in the refrigerator.
- YieldA large batch of two-inch snaps. Cool them fully on a rack — they crisp as they cool — and store airtight, since they soften quickly in humid air.
Gold Medal's cook books were promotional literature from the Washburn-Crosby milling company in Minneapolis, which is why the flour is named twice in seven lines; the recipes themselves were largely conventional American home baking of the period. Ginger snaps belong to a long line of hard, spiced, molasses-sweetened biscuits that reach back through English gingerbread and the New England molasses trade, where cane syrup from the Caribbean was cheaper and far more common in ordinary kitchens than refined sugar. The name is generally traced to the sound and the brittleness rather than to any snapping motion in the making — the cookie is defined by texture, which is why the recipe spends its attention on chilling, thinness and a hot oven instead of on the flavoring. A full tablespoon of ground ginger against only half a cup of sugar marks it as a plain, keeping cookie of the tin-box sort, meant to last on a pantry shelf rather than to be eaten warm.