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Dessert

Honeycomb Gingerbread

A gingerbread made with flour, brown sugar, butter, allspice, ginger, lemon, treacle, baked thin and cut into squares.

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 ↓

Honeycomb Gingerbread

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a rather slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix flour, brown sugar, butter, allspice, ground ginger, grated lemon peel, and lemon juice.

  3. Add treacle to create a paste that is thin enough to spread.

Bake and shape

  1. Butter sheet tins and spread the paste very thinly over them.

  2. Bake until done, watching closely.

  3. Remove from the oven, cut into squares (about 4 inches), and roll each piece round your fingers as you lift it from the tin.

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

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

  3. Allspice + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,302 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the thin paste together as it bakes.
Treacle
Adds moisture, dark sweetness and chewiness, and helps the paste spread thinly.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the biscuits brown and crisp as they bake.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture, and helps the paste release from the tin.

The step that matters

Spread the paste very thinly. A thin layer bakes evenly and crisps into a lacy, brittle texture. A thick layer stays soft in the middle and can burn at the edges before it sets.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, allspice, ginger. 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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