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Dessert

Fine Sweetmeat Gingerbread Nuts

A sweet gingerbread nut made with treacle, butter, ginger, preserved citrus, spices, eggs, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and coriander match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,498 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fine Sweetmeat Gingerbread Nuts

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Combine the treacle in a large bowl.

  2. Melt the butter gently without letting it oil.

  3. Pour the melted butter into the treacle while stirring well.

  4. Add the pounded ginger, preserved lemon peel, preserved orange peel, preserved angelica, pounded coriander seed, and whole caraway seeds. Mix well.

  5. Break the eggs into the mixture and stir until combined.

  6. Gradually add flour until the mixture forms a fine paste.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the mixture into your desired size.

  2. Place them on a bare tin plate.

  3. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C). Bake until done.

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. Lemon + coriandertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,498 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Ginger + coriandertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Lemon + angelicatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together189 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Angelica + carawaytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Treacle
Provides the main sweetness and dark, rich body of the dough.
Fresh butter
Adds fat for a tender texture and a richer flavour.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and add structure as they are stirred in.
Flour
Gives the paste body so the mixture can be shaped and holds its form.
Pounded ginger
Supplies the warm, spicy aroma that defines the gingerbread.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until the mixture forms a fine paste. Adding flour in small amounts lets you judge how stiff the dough is. Too much at once can make it dry and hard to shape, while too little leaves it too soft to hold its form.

Swap the caraway

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, ginger, lemon, orange, angelica, coriander, egg):

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Carawaythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, ginger, lemon, orange, angelica, coriander, 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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