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Dessert

Plain Gingerbread

A simple gingerbread made with molasses, sour cream, egg, baking soda, salt, and ground ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Molasses and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,116 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Plain 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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Mix the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the molasses, sour cream, and egg until well combined.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in a little warm water and add it to the mixture.

  3. Stir in the salt and ginger.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish and bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Molasses + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,408 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Cream + gingertop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Egg + gingertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,337 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Dark cooking molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, dark color and a deep flavor to the gingerbread.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and tenderness, and its acidity reacts with the baking soda.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps give the baked crumb its structure.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses and sour cream to produce gas that lifts the batter.

The step that matters

Dissolving the baking soda. Baking soda only lifts the batter when it reacts with acid, so it must be fully dissolved and evenly distributed. Clumps can leave dense spots or bitter pockets, while even dispersal gives a uniform rise.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, cream, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, cream, 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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