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Dessert

Oak Hill Cakes

Oak Hill Cakes are a ginger molasses cake made with flour, sugar, butter, eggs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and allspice 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 ↓

Oak Hill Cakes

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.

Prepare the dough

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

  2. In a large bowl, combine 4 quarts of flour, 1 lb of brown sugar, 2 ounces of ground ginger, and a little allspice.

  3. Rub in 1 lb of softened butter until the mixture is fine.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat 4 large eggs until light and fluffy.

  5. Add the beaten eggs and 1 quart of molasses to the flour mixture and mix until well combined.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough into thin cakes and place them on a baking sheet.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven until golden brown.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Ginger + molassestop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the thin cakes together.
Unsalted butter
Adds fat that makes the cakes tender and helps the dough hold its shape.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure as they are mixed in.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep sweet flavor that helps the cakes brown.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cakes take on a golden-brown color in the oven.

The step that matters

Baking until golden brown. Thin cakes bake quickly and can go from golden to burnt fast, because the sugars and molasses caramelize and darken at high oven heat. Watch closely near the end of baking.

Swap the allspice

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

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

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