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Dessert

Gingerbread, Orange

A gingerbread cookie flavored with candied orange peel, ginger, nutmeg, and treacle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and ginger 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 ↓

Gingerbread, Orange

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 dough

  1. Mix the chopped orange peel, ground ginger, grated nutmeg, moist sugar, and flour in a large bowl.

  2. Melt the butter and treacle together, then stir into the dry mixture.

  3. Let the mixture stand in a cool place for 2 to 3 hours.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough on a floured surface to ¼ inch thick and cut into fingers.

  2. Place the fingers on a buttered baking sheet, leaving space between each.

  3. Beat the egg yolk with a little milk and brush it over the gingerbread before and after baking.

  4. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 15 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. Orange + gingertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

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

  2. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  4. Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Treacle
Adds moisture, sweetness and a dark, chewy texture to the dough.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavor in the dough.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, helping the gingerbread stay soft and browned.
Egg yolk
Gives the glazed surface a golden color and a glossy finish when baked.

The step that matters

Resting the dough. Letting the mixture stand for 2 to 3 hours allows the flour to absorb the treacle and butter, making the dough easier to roll and giving a more even texture after baking.

Swap the orange

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

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

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