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Dessert

Soft Gingerbread

A moist gingerbread dough made with molasses, buttermilk, butter, sugar, eggs, spices, and flour, baked until done.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Soft 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 large bowl, combine molasses, buttermilk, and butter.

  2. Add the sugar and mix well.

  3. Beat the eggs in a separate bowl, then add the beaten eggs to the mixture.

  4. Stir in the dissolved baking soda, ground ginger, ground cloves, and nutmeg.

  5. Gradually add flour until the dough is rather thin.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased baking pan.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick comes out clean.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Buttermilk + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Provides dark color, moisture and a deep, sweet flavor.
Buttermilk
Adds moisture and tang, and reacts with baking soda to help the cake rise.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk and molasses to produce gas that lightens the crumb.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as it bakes.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until the dough is rather thin. Too much flour makes the gingerbread dense and dry, while a batter that is too thin may not set properly. Adding flour gradually lets you stop at the right consistency.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, buttermilk, egg, butter, sugar, clove, nutmeg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, buttermilk, egg, butter, sugar, clove, nutmeg. 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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