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A gingerbread cake made with flour, butter, treacle, raisins, almonds, spices, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Hamilton, Margaret · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Home Recipe Book

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dry mix

  1. Put flour, bread soda, ground ginger, mixed spice, raisins, and almonds into a basin and mix well.

Make the wet mixture

  1. In a saucepan, melt butter, sugar, and treacle, and bring to a boil.

  2. Beat eggs, then pour the boiling treacle mixture into the eggs, stirring vigorously.

Bake

  1. Combine the wet mixture with the dry ingredients and beat thoroughly.

  2. Pour the batter into a buttered cake tin.

  3. Bake for about an hour until the cake is ready.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

897Calories
28 gProtein
26 gFat
137 gCarbs

Counts 7 of 9 ingredients. The other 2 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 7 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Grape1/2 cup (76g)62
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Ginger1 tsp grated fresh (2g)2
Syrupnot in our table0
Waternot in our table0

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

By Hamilton, Margaret. 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Ginger + raisintop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets in the oven.
Treacle
Adds sweetness, dark colour and a moist, rich texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown and stay moist.
Bread soda
Reacts with the acidic treacle to make the cake rise and stay light.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling treacle mixture into the eggs. Pouring boiling syrup into eggs quickly while stirring vigorously keeps the eggs from scrambling into lumps, giving a smooth batter.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, butter, syrup, egg, bread, raisin):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, syrup, egg, bread, raisin. 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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