Name: Sugar Gingerbread
Ingredients: 2 cups sugar; 1 cup butter; 4 eggs; ⅔ teaspoon baking soda; ½ teaspoon cream of tartar; 1 nutmeg, grated; essence (flavoring) to taste; flour, enough to make a stiff dough

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sugar Gingerbread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.
Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.
Stir in the baking soda, cream of tartar, grated nutmeg, and essence.
Gradually add flour until the dough is stiff enough to roll out.

Shape and bake

Roll out the dough on a floured surface and cut into squares.
Place the squares on a baking sheet and bake until golden.

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.

Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,920 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the dough brown as it bakes.
Butter: Provides fat for richness, tenderness, and a creamy base when creamed with sugar.
Eggs: Add structure and binding, holding the dough together as it sets.
Baking soda: Reacts with acidic components to produce gas that helps the dough rise and brown.
Cream of tartar: Acidic ingredient that stabilizes the leavening and contributes to a tender texture.
Flour: Forms the gluten and starch structure that gives the dough its body and shape.

“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.