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Dessert

Cream Gingerbread

A gingerbread cake made with molasses, sour cream, flour, spices, and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cream Gingerbread

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).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg, brown sugar, and spices together.

  2. Add the molasses and 1 cup of flour, then mix in the sour cream.

  3. Sift the baking soda with the remaining cup of flour and add it to the mixture.

  4. The batter should be thick; if not, add up to ½ cup more flour.

Bake and ice

  1. Pour the batter into a shallow pan and bake until the cake is about 2 inches thick.

  2. Once done, ice with boiled icing.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture, and a deep sweet flavor to the cake.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and tenderness, and its acidity works with the baking soda.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps give the cake its structure.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream and molasses to lift the cake as it bakes.

The step that matters

Adding flour to the batter. The batter should be thick, so add extra flour only if needed. Too much flour makes the cake dense and dry, while too little leaves it loose and flat.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, cream, flour, egg, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, cream, flour, egg, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg. 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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