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Dessert

Hard Molasses Gingerbread

A firm gingerbread made with molasses, butter, sour milk, baking soda, ginger, cloves, lemon rind, and flour, rolled in brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Hard Molasses 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.

Make the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a large bowl, mix molasses, butter, sour milk, baking soda, ginger, cloves, and lemon rind.

  3. Gradually add flour until a stiff paste forms.

Roll and bake

  1. Butter the baking sheets.

  2. Roll the dough out on the sheets as thin as possible.

  3. Sprinkle with fine brown sugar.

  4. Bake quickly until done.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  4. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Adds deep sweetness, dark color and a moist, chewy texture.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries the spice flavor.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda so the gingerbread rises and softens.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to produce gas for rising and browning.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the stiff paste together once baked.

The step that matters

Bake quickly until done. Thin dough dries and darkens fast, so it can burn before it sets. Watching closely in the hot oven keeps it crisp and evenly browned.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, butter, milk, ginger, clove, flour, sugar. 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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