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Dessert

Molasses Cake

A sweet cake made with molasses, butter, sour milk, flour, cinnamon, ginger, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Molasses Cake

Why it works: Cinnamon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Molasses Cake

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.

Prepare

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

  2. In a bowl, cream the butter until smooth.

  3. Add the sour milk and molasses, mixing well.

  4. In another bowl, combine the flour, cinnamon, ginger, and baking soda.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into shallow tins.

  2. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Molasses + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,928 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

Butter
Adds fat that makes the cake tender and rich in texture.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda so the cake rises.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and deep sweetness to the cake.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that lifts the batter.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture. Adding the flour mixture slowly and stirring only until combined keeps the batter smooth and limits gluten development, which would otherwise make the cake tough.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, molasses, flour, cinnamon. 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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