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Ginger Snaps
1 cup molasses
3 cups flour
½ cup butter or shortening
1 teaspoon soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ginger
Heat the molasses and shortening. Mix and sift the dry ingredients and add to first mixture. Thoroughly chill, toss on
lightly floured board, and roll out very thin. Cut as desired. The bowl containing the remaining dough must be kept in a cool place or it will be necessary to add more flour. Excess flour will make the cookies hard and unattractive. Put on greased bakingsheet and bake in a moderate oven (320-390° F.) twelve to fifteen minutes.
A lean, rollable molasses dough with no egg and no sugar beyond the molasses itself. The whole recipe hinges on temperature: cold dough rolls thin, warm dough demands extra flour and turns the snaps hard.
- OvenThe given 320–390°F is a wide band typical of early gas-range charts. Set a modern oven to 350°F and check at ten minutes; thin snaps colour fast at the edges.
- Chill properly"Thoroughly chill" means the dough should be genuinely cold and firm before rolling, and the reserve dough goes back into the cold between batches. The recipe itself ties this to whether the cookies stay good or turn hard.
- Roll very thinAim for about 1/8 inch or less. These have no leavening beyond a teaspoon of soda and no egg, so thickness is what separates a snap from a soft molasses cookie.
- MolassesUse unsulphured dark molasses, not blackstrap, which is bitter and was generally thought poor for baking. Golden syrup is not a good substitute here; it lacks the acidity the soda reacts with.
- SodaSift it thoroughly with the flour. Dropped into the warm molasses undispersed it leaves soapy spots and uneven browning.
- Heating the fatWarm the molasses and butter only until the fat melts. Boiling molasses stiffens the dough and darkens the flavour.
- Baking sheetGrease lightly or use parchment. A heavy sheet is better than a thin one; these scorch on the bottom before the tops set.
- YieldRoughly four to five dozen two-inch rounds, depending on how thin the dough is rolled. They crisp as they cool, so judge doneness by set edges rather than by snap in the oven.
Ginger snaps belong to a long line of hard spiced biscuits — the English gingerbread nuts and brandy snaps, the German Pfeffernüsse — that kept for weeks in a tin and travelled well, which is why they turn up constantly in nineteenth-century American household books. Molasses did the work sugar does now: it was cheap, it came by the barrel from the West Indies trade, and its acidity gave saleratus or soda something to react with, so no egg or chemical baking powder was needed. This version is stripped to six ingredients and written for a cook expected to roll and cut by hand. The insistence on keeping the reserve dough cool is a small window into a kitchen without refrigeration, where a warm room in summer could ruin a batch before it reached the oven.