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Dessert

Spice Nuts

A spiced sweet dough baked into small nut-sized pieces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,620 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Spice Nuts

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Rub the butter into the flour.

  2. Mix in the treacle, allspice, ginger, caraway, and coriander seeds.

  3. Roll the moist sugar and strew it over the mixture.

  4. Roll the dough into long rolls the size of your finger.

Shape and bake

  1. Cut the rolls into pieces the size of a nutmeg.

  2. Place them on buttered tins, ensuring they do not touch.

  3. Wash with water or small beer.

  4. Bake in a steady oven at 350°F (175°C).

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. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Allspice + coriandertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together393 recipes

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

  4. Caraway + coriandertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together185 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-decenal (green, must).

  5. Flour + carawaytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Treacle
Adds sweetness, moisture and a dark, rich flavour to the dough.
Flour
Forms the structure of the dough that holds the cookies together.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the dough.
Ground ginger
Adds warm, pungent spice flavour to the cookies.
Ground allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the cookies.

The step that matters

Place the pieces so they do not touch on the tins. Cookies spread as they bake, so pieces placed close together can fuse into one mass and bake unevenly. Spacing lets each piece brown and set on its own.

Swap the coriander

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, allspice, ginger, caraway, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Corianderthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, allspice, ginger, caraway, sugar. 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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