Name: Hard Gingerbread
Ingredients: 1 pound lard; ½ pound butter; 1½ pounds brown sugar; 3 pints West India molasses; ginger to taste; cinnamon to taste; allspice to taste; cloves to taste; flour (enough to make a stiff dough)

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Hard Gingerbread

Ingredients

Directions

Cream together the lard and butter.
Add the brown sugar and mix well.
Stir in the molasses and spices.
Gradually add flour until a stiff dough forms.
Roll out the dough very thin and cut with a cutter.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,536 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,380 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,038 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

Swap the ginger

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

Nutmegfits better
Cardamomfits about as well
Gingerthe original
Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, molasses, cinnamon, allspice, clove, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.