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Dessert

Drop Ginger Cakes

Drop ginger cakes are sweet, moist cakes made with sugar, molasses, ginger, and baking soda, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and molasses are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,225 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Drop Ginger Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix sugar, molasses, sweet milk, hot water, shortening, baking soda, alum, ginger, and salt until the batter is as stiff as pound cake.

  2. Chill the batter in the refrigerator for 1 to 2 hours.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter onto baking pans, leaving space between each.

  2. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until done.

  3. Alternatively, roll out the dough and cut into shapes with a cookie cutter.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + gingertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,519 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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 sweetness, dark color and a moist, tender crumb with deep flavor.
Shortening
Provides fat for tenderness and a soft, moist texture in the cake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas that lifts and leavens the cakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps brown the cakes as they bake.
Ginger
Supplies the main spiced aroma that defines the flavor of these cakes.

The step that matters

Mixing the batter to a stiff consistency. A stiff batter holds its shape when dropped and rises upward rather than spreading flat. Thin batter spreads in the oven and loses the domed drop-cake form, and the leavening gas can escape before the structure sets.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerthe original
  3. Clovefits less well
  4. Nutmegfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, molasses, milk. 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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