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Dessert

Christmas Cakes

A spiced molasses cake made with brown sugar, lard, spices, baking soda, milk, and flour, chilled and baked slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Christmas Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Dissolve the baking soda in a little milk.

  2. Combine the molasses with the lard in a bowl.

  3. Add the brown sugar and spices.

  4. Mix in enough flour to form a stiff dough.

Chill and bake

  1. Chill the dough for a few days.

  2. Roll the dough thin and bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C).

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Adds moisture, deep sweetness, and dark colour to the dough.
Lard
Provides fat that keeps the cake tender and short.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the crust brown during baking.
Flour
Forms the stiff dough structure that holds the cake together.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to lift the dough and aid browning.

The step that matters

Chilling the dough. A stiff dough needs time to rest so the flour hydrates and the fat firms up. Chilled dough rolls thin without tearing and bakes more evenly.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, sugar, cinnamon, clove, milk, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, sugar, cinnamon, clove, milk, 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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