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Dessert

Colonial Gingerbread

A gingerbread cake made with molasses, butter, flour, boiling water, baking soda, walnuts, raisins, cinnamon, ginger, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Colonial Gingerbread

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 batter

  1. In a mixing bowl, combine molasses, butter, and ½ cup of flour.

  2. Dissolve baking soda in boiling water and pour over the mixture. Stir well and let cool.

  3. Add walnuts, raisins, cinnamon, ginger, and remaining flour.

  4. Finally, mix in the beaten eggs.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a shallow pan at 350°F (175°C) until done.

  2. Serve warm.

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 + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Walnut + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Provides sweetness, moisture and the dark color and rich flavor of the gingerbread.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as the batter sets in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to lighten the crumb and help the gingerbread rise.
Eggs
Add structure and binding, helping the batter set into a cohesive crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the crumb.

The step that matters

Dissolve baking soda in boiling water and let the mixture cool before adding the eggs. Baking soda reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas for rising. Adding the eggs while the mixture is still very hot can cook them unevenly, and the leavening works best when the batter is combined carefully rather than rushed.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Pistachiofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, butter, flour, raisin, cinnamon, ginger, egg. 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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