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Dessert

Gingerbread, Nuremburg

A gingerbread cake from Nuremberg made with eggs, sugar, lemon peel, spices, candied orange peel, almonds, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Gingerbread, Nuremburg

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

  1. Beat the whites and yolks of the eggs with the sugar for 30 minutes.

  2. Mix in the lemon peel, ground spices, candied orange-peel, sliced almonds, and flour.

Shape and bake

  1. Form the mixture into cakes about 8 inches long, 4 inches wide, and 2 inches thick.

  2. Place the cakes on wafer paper and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + cardamomtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,299 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Clove + cardamomtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,114 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Lemon + cardamomtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whipped with the sugar to give the cakes lift and a light, airy structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the cakes and, beaten with the eggs, helps build a stable foam.
Almonds
Add body and a rich, nutty texture to the crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cakes together once baked.

The step that matters

Beating the eggs with the sugar. Beating for the full 30 minutes incorporates air into the egg foam, which gives the cakes their lightness. Under-beating leaves them dense once the flour is added.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, lemon, cinnamon, clove, cardamom, orange):

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Pistachiofits about as well
  3. Chickpeafits less well
  4. Cashew nutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, lemon, cinnamon, clove, cardamom, orange. 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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