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Dessert

Excellent Soft Ginger Bread

A moist ginger bread made with molasses, brown sugar, butter, sweet milk, baking soda, allspice, ginger, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and ginger 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 ↓

Excellent Soft Ginger Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix together the molasses, brown sugar, butter, sweet milk, baking soda, allspice, and ginger until well combined.

  2. Gradually add the sifted flour, mixing until smooth.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into shallow pans.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

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. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Allspice + flourtop 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

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a rich sweetness to the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses acidity to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the batter into a cake-like crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a softer crumb.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and helps the batter hydrate the flour evenly.

The step that matters

Gradually add the sifted flour, mixing until smooth. Adding flour gradually and mixing only until smooth keeps lumps out and avoids overworking the gluten, which would make the cake tough rather than soft.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Allspicethe original

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