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Dessert

Soft Gingerbread

A moist gingerbread cake with raisins baked in small round tins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Soft Gingerbread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the butter, sugar, molasses, and cinnamon.

  2. Heat the mixture on the stove until lukewarm.

  3. Add the buttermilk, then the beaten eggs, followed by the dissolved baking soda.

  4. Gradually mix in the flour until you have a thick batter.

  5. Beat the batter hard for five minutes.

  6. Fold in the floured raisins and beat for an additional three minutes.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into small round tins and bake.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + buttermilktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk or buttermilk to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a rich, slightly acidic sweetness.
Flour
Forms the gluten network and sets the crumb as the cake bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a soft crumb.
Sour or buttermilk
Provides acidity that activates the baking soda and tenderizes the crumb.

The step that matters

Dissolving the baking soda in boiling water and adding it to the acidic liquid. Baking soda only leavens when it meets acid and heat. Adding it to the acidic buttermilk mixture promptly lets the gas form in the batter rather than being lost before baking, so the gingerbread rises properly.

“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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