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Dessert

To Make Fine Gingerbread

A sweet gingerbread cake made with treacle, butter, sugar, flour, ginger, pepper, candied orange peel, and glazed with sugar and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,833 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

To Make Fine Gingerbread

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the dough

  1. Melt the treacle and butter together in a clean pan with the coarse raw sugar.

  2. In a deep bowl, combine the flour.

  3. Pour the melted mixture over the flour; stir until well mixed.

  4. Let the mixture stand overnight.

  5. The next day, add dissolved alum and mix well.

  6. On a floured surface, add ginger, Jamaica pepper, and candied orange peel to the dough; mix thoroughly.

  7. Incorporate about ½ pound more flour and shape the dough into square cakes.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the cakes on a clean tin, glaze with sugar and water, and bake in a moderate oven (350°F or 175°C) for about an hour.

  2. Allow the cakes to cool slightly before removing them 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. Ginger + orangetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Pepper + orangetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,402 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour 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

Treacle
Adds sweetness, moisture and a dark, rich colour to the dough.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the dough and sets as it bakes.
Coarse raw sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cakes brown on the surface.
Ginger
Provides the characteristic spicy aroma and warmth.
Candied orange peel
Adds sweet, citrusy aroma and chewy pieces throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Adding the dissolved alum. Alum is a leavening agent that reacts to lift and loosen the dough; it must be fully dissolved and evenly mixed so the rise is uniform rather than patchy.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Orangethe original

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