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Dessert

Gateau D'epice, or French Gingerbread

A spiced gingerbread cake made with vanilla, brandy, treacle, butter, spices, candied fruit, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Gateau D'epice, or French Gingerbread

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Pound the vanilla pod with the brandy.

  2. Stir the mixture into the treacle in a saucepan.

  3. Add the butter, cinnamon, ginger, candied fruit, and salt.

  4. Simmer gently for 5-6 minutes, stirring constantly.

  5. Pour the mixture into a bowl and let it cool.

  6. Once cool, add enough flour to make a solid batter.

Bake

  1. Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven on buttered tins in small rounds, spaced apart.

  2. Bake for 45 minutes.

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. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Vanilla + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  4. Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Ginger + orangetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Treacle
Provides dark sweetness, moisture and the characteristic brown colour of the gingerbread.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the gingerbread a tender crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that lets the cooled mixture set into a solid batter.
Ground ginger
Supplies the warm, spicy aroma that defines gingerbread.
Powdered cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet spice aroma that complements the ginger.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding flour. Flour added to a hot mixture can cook unevenly and thin the batter, so cooling first helps it form a solid, workable batter that holds its shape in the oven.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vanilla, brandy, butter, cinnamon, ginger, orange, flour):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Blackberryfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vanilla, brandy, butter, cinnamon, ginger, orange, flour. 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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