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Dessert

Factory Gingerbread

A gingerbread cookie made with wheat and rye flour, lard, sugar, spices, milk, and golden syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Factory Gingerbread

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 310°F (150°C).

  2. In a large bowl, mix the wheat flour, rye flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

  3. Add the lard, sugar, ground ginger, crushed cinnamon, mixed spice, milk, and golden syrup. Mix until a medium stiff dough forms.

  4. Cover and let rest for 2 hours.

Shape and bake

  1. Divide the dough into 8 oz. pieces. Shape each piece into a round.

  2. Place the rounds in greased hoops on baking sheets. Dock the centers.

  3. Bake in the preheated oven. While hot, brush with syrup or a mixture of gelatin and water.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Wheat + ryetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Wheat + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together537 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  5. Flour + ryetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,320 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

Wheat flour
Provides the main structure that holds the dough together as it bakes.
Rye flour
Adds flavour and softness, since rye has less gluten-forming protein than wheat.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic ingredients to release gas, helping the gingerbread rise and spread.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the dough so the baking soda reacts properly and the texture stays tender.
Lard
Adds fat that keeps the crumb tender and moist.
Golden syrup
Sweetens and moistens the dough and helps it brown as it bakes.

The step that matters

Resting the dough for 2 hours. Resting lets the flour fully hydrate and the gluten relax, so the dough is easier to shape and the baked texture is more even.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wheat, flour, rye, cream, sugar, cinnamon, milk):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovefits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wheat, flour, rye, cream, sugar, cinnamon, milk. 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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