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Dessert

Gingerbread

A gingerbread dough made with flour, treacle, raw sugar, butter, carbonate of magnesia, tartaric acid, ginger, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Gingerbread

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Gingerbread

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the dough

  1. Mix all ingredients together until well combined.

Rest, shape and bake

  1. Prepare for baking by letting the mixture rest for 30 minutes.

  2. Shape the dough as desired and place it in the oven.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together as it bakes.
Treacle
Adds sweetness, moisture and the dark colour and rich flavour typical of gingerbread.
Raw sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crumb brown during baking.
Butter
Adds fat, which tenderises the crumb and carries the spice flavours.
Carbonate of magnesia
Reacts with the tartaric acid to release gas that lifts the dough.
Tartaric acid
Acid that reacts with the carbonate of magnesia to produce rising gas.

The step that matters

Resting before baking. The carbonate and tartaric acid start releasing gas once wet, so the dough should go into the oven after the stated rest rather than being left much longer, or it may lose some of its lift.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, cinnamon, nutmeg. 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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