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Dessert

Hard Gingerbread

A dense gingerbread dough made with flour, lard, butter, sugar, spices, baking soda, milk, and molasses, baked until firm.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Hard Gingerbread

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Hard 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 the dough

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

  2. In a large bowl, rub the lard and butter into the flour.

  3. Add the sugar and spices (ginger, cinnamon, cloves, and allspice) to the flour mixture.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in a little milk and mix it into the dough with enough molasses to form a cohesive mixture.

  5. Let the dough rest for 2 hours in a cool place.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough very thin and cut into desired shapes.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven until firm.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough once bound with fat and liquid.
Lard
Rubbed into the flour to give a short, tender texture.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, helping the dough stay firm after baking.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and a dark colour to the dough.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses and gives the dough a light lift.

The step that matters

Roll out the dough very thin. Thin dough dries and firms evenly in the oven, so the pieces bake crisp and hard rather than soft or unevenly cooked in the centre.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, cinnamon, clove, allspice, 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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