Name: Sunderland Gingerbread Nxjts
Ingredients: ½ lb. treacle; 1 lb. moist sugar; 1 lb. butter; 2 lbs. flour; 1 oz. ground ginger; 1 oz. allspice; 1 oz. coriander seeds

Why it works: Ginger and allspice 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 ↓

Sunderland Gingerbread Nxjts

Ingredients

Directions

Freshly grind the allspice, coriander seeds, and ginger.
In a bowl, mix the ground spices with flour and sugar.
Warm the treacle and butter together.
Stir the warm mixture into the flour mixture until it forms a smooth paste.
Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto a baking sheet.

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.

Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,620 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Ginger + coriandertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,505 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Allspice + coriandertop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together393 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + allspicetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,302 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Swap the coriander

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

Cinnamonfits better
Nutmegfits better
Cardamomfits better
Corianderthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, flour, ginger, allspice. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.