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Dessert

West Indlvn Ginger Cakes

A sweet ginger cake made with molasses, sugar, butter, preserved ginger, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

West Indlvn Ginger Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the molasses and yellow sugar together for 20 minutes.

  2. Stir in the butter and chopped preserved ginger.

  3. Add the ground ginger after it has been pounded and sifted.

  4. Remove from heat and let cool slightly.

Make the dough

  1. Sift 2 to 3 quarts of flour into a bowl.

  2. Make a well in the center of the flour.

  3. Pour the mixture into the well.

  4. When cool enough to handle, mix in enough flour to form a pliable dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough thinly.

  2. Cut the dough into round cakes.

  3. Bake until crisp and brown.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Molasses + syruptop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together272 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  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. Molasses + gingertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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
Provides dark color, rich flavor and moisture, and helps the cakes brown.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the dough.
Preserved ginger
Adds sweet, sharp gingery flavor and moisture throughout the cake.
All-purpose flour
Forms the dough's structure once mixed with the warm syrup.

The step that matters

Mix in enough flour to form a pliable dough. The syrup is wet and sticky, so the dough needs enough flour to become workable. Too little leaves it too soft to roll thinly, while too much makes the cakes dry and tough.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, sugar, butter, syrup, 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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