Skip to main content
Dessert

Ginger Sponge Cake

A moist cake flavored with ginger, cinnamon, and cloves, made with milk, molasses, sugar, butter, flour, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter 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 Sponge 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the milk, molasses, sugar, and butter until well combined.

  2. In another bowl, sift together the flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

  3. Add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture and stir until smooth.

  4. Beat in the eggs, ginger, cinnamon, and cloves until fully incorporated.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a shallow pan and bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick 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.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Add structure and help the batter bind and rise as it sets.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the cake its structure.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that supports the rise and stabilizes the batter.
Molasses
Adds moisture, sweetness, and a dark color that promotes browning.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer crumb.

The step that matters

Checking doneness with a toothpick. Baking soda and the acidic molasses start gas production quickly, so the batter should go into the oven promptly after mixing. Underbaking leaves a wet, sunken center, while overbaking dries the crumb, so the toothpick test helps confirm the cake is set.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, molasses, sugar, butter, flour, cream, egg. 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 recipesMolasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesGinger CakeGinger Cake93 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipes