Skip to main content
Dessert

Soft Ginger Drop Cakes

A moist ginger cake made with brown sugar, molasses, lard, and ginger, baked in a single batch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Tea and ginger work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 216 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Soft Ginger Drop Cakes

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, cream together the brown sugar and lard.

  3. Add the molasses, baking soda, and cold tea; mix well.

  4. Stir in the ginger, flour, baking powder, salt, and egg until combined.

Bake and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter onto a greased baking sheet.

  2. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until lightly browned.

  3. Let cool before serving.

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. Tea + gingertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together216 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Ginger + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cakes brown.
Lard
Creams with the sugar to add fat, tenderness and a soft crumb.
Molasses
Adds dark sweetness, moisture and a deep flavor typical of ginger cakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas, helping the cakes rise.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cakes together as they bake.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness.

The step that matters

Baking time and colour. Drop cakes bake quickly and can over-darken or dry out. Pull them once lightly browned, since residual heat keeps cooking them on the sheet.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, molasses, tea, flour, egg. 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.

You might also like

Ginger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesMolasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesGinger CakeGinger Cake93 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipes