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Dessert

Hard Molasses Gingerbread

A dense gingerbread made with molasses, butter, sour milk, ginger, cloves, lemon rind, and flour, rolled and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Hard Molasses Gingerbread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a large bowl, mix molasses, butter, sour milk, baking soda, ginger, cloves, and lemon rind.

  3. Gradually add flour until a stiff paste forms.

Shape and bake

  1. Butter the baking sheets.

  2. Roll the dough out on the sheets to a thin layer.

  3. Sprinkle fine brown sugar on top.

  4. Bake in the preheated oven until done.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  4. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture and a deep, sweet flavor to the gingerbread.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich mouthfeel.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to help the dough rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to produce gas that leavens the dough.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the stiff paste together after baking.

The step that matters

Bake in the preheated oven until done. Baking soda starts reacting as soon as it meets the acidic sour milk and molasses, so the dough should go into a properly preheated oven without delay. Baking until done sets the structure and drives off moisture, so a thin sheet can dry out or scorch if it is left too long.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, butter, milk, ginger, clove, flour, sugar. 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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