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Dessert

Soda Gingerbread

A sweet gingerbread cookie dough made with soda, ginger, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Soda 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

  1. Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a large bowl, mix flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

  3. In another bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  4. Add yellow ginger to butter mixture and mix well.

  5. Gradually add dry ingredients to butter mixture, mixing until combined.

  6. Add milk as needed to form a stiff paste.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll dough very thin on a floured surface.

  2. Cut into squares and place on buttered baking sheets.

  3. Bake until lightly 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.

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

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the dough together as it bakes.
Cream of tartar
Acidic ingredient that reacts with baking soda to help the cookies rise and stay tender.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the cream of tartar to produce gas that lightens the dough.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and tenderness, and creaming it with sugar traps air for texture.
Sugar
Creamed with butter to add sweetness and help create a light, fluffy base.

The step that matters

Roll dough very thin. Thin dough bakes through quickly and crisps, while thick dough stays soft in the middle. Rolling on a floured surface also stops sticking without making the dough tough.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, cream, butter, sugar, 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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