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Dessert

Soft Sugar Gingerbread

Soft Sugar Gingerbread is a gingerbread made with butter, sour milk, yellow ginger, soda, eggs, flour, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By E. Putnam · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and tea work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 216 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Soft Sugar Gingerbread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat one cup of butter and two cups of sugar together.

  2. Add one cup of sour milk, one teaspoonful of soda, four eggs, five cups of 60% Putnam's flour, and half a cup of yellow ginger.

Bake

  1. Bake in thin pans for thirty minutes.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

380Calories
14 gProtein
25 gFat
26 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 5 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Sour Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Ginger1 tsp grated fresh (2g)2

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By E. Putnam. 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. See the original page.

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 + teatop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together216 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + teatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together738 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Beaten with sugar to trap air, giving a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the soda and helps tenderise the crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set as they bake, adding structure.
Flour (in the method)
Forms the structure that sets as the batter bakes.
Soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to release gas that lifts the batter.
Yellow ginger
Provides the spicy aroma that defines the gingerbread flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the soda. Soda reacts with the acidic sour milk straight away, releasing gas that lifts the batter. Baking soon after mixing keeps that rise working for a light, soft crumb.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, milk, tea, egg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Parsleyfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, tea, egg. 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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