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Dessert

Sponge Gingerbread, Without Eggs

A gingerbread cake made without eggs, using molasses, sour milk, sugar, baking soda, butter, flour, and ginger spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Sponge Gingerbread, Without Eggs

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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a large bowl, mix molasses, sour milk, and sugar.

  3. Dissolve baking soda in the milk and add to the mixture.

  4. Melt the butter and stir it in.

  5. Gradually add flour until well combined.

  6. Add ginger and spice to taste.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into shallow tins.

  2. Bake until golden brown and eat 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Molasses + gingertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture, and a deep, sweet flavor to the cake.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to lift the batter and keeps the crumb tender.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to produce gas that makes the cake rise.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the batter into a cake as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown as it bakes.

The step that matters

Dissolve baking soda in the milk and add to the mixture. Baking soda needs an acid to react and release gas. Dissolving it fully in the sour milk before mixing spreads the reaction evenly so the cake rises uniformly rather than in pockets.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Jalapenofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, milk, sugar, butter, flour. 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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