Skip to main content
Dessert

Gingerbread Parkin

A sweet gingerbread cake made with butter, lard, oatmeal, brown sugar, ginger, treacle, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Gingerbread Parkin

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. Cream together the butter and lard.

  3. In a large bowl, combine the oatmeal and brown sugar.

  4. Add the ground ginger and mix well.

  5. In a separate bowl, mix the treacle with the milk.

  6. Stir the treacle mixture into the oatmeal mixture to form a stiff paste.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into oiled tins or dripping-tins.

  2. Bake for about 20 minutes in small tins or 1½ hours in larger dishes, until brightly browned.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 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

Oatmeal
Forms the bulk of the paste and gives the parkin its hearty, crumbly body.
Treacle
Adds sweetness, dark color and moisture, helping the parkin stay sticky and browned.
Butter and lard
Add fat for richness and a tender, short texture.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and caramel notes, and helps the top brown during baking.
Ground ginger
Provides the warm, spicy aroma that defines the gingerbread flavor.
New milk
Adds moisture that loosens the treacle mixture into a workable paste.

The step that matters

Bake until brightly browned. Treacle and sugar darken and caramelise in the oven, but they can scorch if overbaked. Checking for a deep, even brown colour at the stated time helps the parkin set and stay moist rather than dry or burnt.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Gingerthe original

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

You might also like

Ginger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesGinger CakeGinger Cake93 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesSoft Ginger CakeSoft Ginger Cake56 recipes