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Dessert

Ginger Cup Cake

A ginger cake made with eggs, molasses, brown sugar, butter, milk, flour, spices, and pearl ash, baked in a moderate oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Ginger Cup Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Cut the butter into the milk and warm slightly.

  2. Warm the molasses and stir it into the milk and butter mixture.

  3. Gradually stir in the sugar.

  4. Set aside to cool.

  5. Beat the eggs until light and stir them into the mixture alternately with the flour.

  6. Add the ginger, allspice, cloves, and pearl ash and stir well.

Bake

  1. Butter small tins and fill them nearly full with the mixture.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + flourtop 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).

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

Eggs
Add structure and richness, setting the crumb as the batter bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich, moist texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a dark color with deep flavor.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the crumb brown.
Pearl ash
Acts as a leavener that reacts with the acidic molasses to help the cake rise.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour. Alternating the flour with the eggs and mixing only until combined keeps gluten development limited. Overmixing toughens the batter and can make the cake dense.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, molasses, sugar, butter, milk, flour, allspice. 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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