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Dessert

Honey Ginger Cake

A sweet cake made with honey, ginger, flour, butter, eggs, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and caraway match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,435 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Honey Ginger Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the batter

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

  2. Rub together the flour and butter until well combined.

  3. Mix in the brown sugar and strong ginger, and add caraway seeds if desired.

  4. Beat the eggs and add them alternately with the strained honey to the mixture.

  5. Stir in the dissolved baking soda with vinegar towards the end.

  6. Beat or stir the mixture until light and fluffy.

Bake

  1. Transfer the batter to a square or block-tin pan.

  2. Bake for an hour or more, depending on thickness.

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. Flour + carawaytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Ginger + carawaytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together288 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Honey + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,586 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Ginger + honeytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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 main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and helps the batter trap air when beaten.
Eggs
Add structure and moisture, helping the cake set as it bakes.
Honey
Adds sweetness and moisture, and promotes browning in the finished cake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the vinegar to release gas that lightens the cake.

The step that matters

Stir in the dissolved baking soda with vinegar towards the end.. Baking soda reacts with acid to release gas quickly, so it should be mixed in late and the batter baked promptly to keep the rise.

Swap the caraway

The recipe marks caraway as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, sugar, ginger, egg, honey, vinegar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Carawaythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, ginger, egg, honey, vinegar. 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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