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Dessert

Ginger Cup Cake

A sweet cake made with sugar, melted butter, eggs, treacle, flour, ginger, baking soda, and milk, baked in a mold or pans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Ginger Cup Cake

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.

Make the batter

  1. Mix the sugar and melted butter until combined.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and treacle, mixing well.

  3. Stir in the flour, ground ginger, baking soda, and milk until smooth.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold or patty pans.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

  3. Bake for 15 minutes in small pans or 1.5 hours in a mold.

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. Sugar + flourtop 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as the batter sets.
Baking soda
Reacts with the treacle's acidity to lift the batter as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb to the cake.
Treacle
Adds moisture, dark sweetness and a deep color to the cake.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps brown the crust as it bakes.

The step that matters

Bake for the right time in the right pan. Small cupcake pans and a large mold need very different bake times. Baking the batter in a mold for the cupcake time leaves the center wet, while overbaking small pans dries the cakes out.

Swap the ginger

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

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

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