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Dessert

Ginger Cakes Without Butter

A ginger cake made with sugar, ginger, water, flour, and preserved orange peel, baked without butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,833 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Ginger Cakes Without Butter

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Pound and sift the ginger.

  2. Boil the ginger with water for 5 minutes, then let it cool.

  3. Pound the preserved orange peel and strain it through a fine sieve.

Make and shape the dough

  1. On a clean surface, make a wall with the flour, then add the orange peel and ginger mixture.

  2. Mix everything into a paste and roll it out to ⅛ inch thick.

  3. Cut into desired shapes and prick the cakes all over before baking.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) on floured plates.

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 + orangetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Ginger + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the paste, giving the cakes body as they set in the oven.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cakes brown and firm up during baking.
Ginger
Provides the main spicy aroma and flavor of the cakes.
Orange peel
Adds bright citrus aroma and a slightly bitter flavor to the paste.

The step that matters

Rolling the paste to an even ⅛ inch thickness. Thickness controls how the cakes bake. Thin, even pieces dry and set uniformly, while thick or uneven pieces may stay doughy in the center or scorch at the edges.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ginger, 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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