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Baking

Spiced Ginger Cake

A moist ginger cake made with sugar, butter, molasses, eggs, flour, baking soda, sour cream, nutmeg, cloves, and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Spiced Ginger Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Beat the eggs until very light and mix them with the creamed butter and sugar.

  3. Add the molasses, spices, and baking soda dissolved in sour cream.

  4. Sift the flour twice before measuring and add it to the mixture.

  5. Mix until the batter is rather soft.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan.

  2. Bake for 30 minutes.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Sugar + molassestop 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

Eggs
Add structure and richness as they are beaten light, helping the batter hold its air and set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure as its proteins set during baking.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a tender, fine crumb and rich flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps trap air for lightness and gives gentle browning.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark colour and a deep sweetness that helps the cake stay soft.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream to produce gas that helps the cake rise.

The step that matters

Dissolving the baking soda in sour cream. Baking soda needs an acid to react and release gas for rising. Dissolving it in the sour cream, which is acidic, lets the reaction start in the batter so the cake rises properly rather than staying dense.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits about as well
  3. Cardamomfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, molasses, egg, flour, cream, nutmeg. 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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