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Dessert

Fairy Gingerbread

A gingerbread cookie made with butter, sugar, flour, baking soda, ginger, and sour milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Fairy Gingerbread

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter.

  2. Gradually add the sugar.

  3. Alternately add the flour.

  4. Add the sour milk.

  5. Sift the baking soda and ginger into the flour.

  6. Mix the flour with the sifted ingredients.

  7. Beat the mixture well.

Prepare and bake

  1. Turn the baking pans upside down.

  2. Grease the pans.

  3. Spread the mixture thinly.

  4. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) until brown.

Shape and serve

  1. While hot, cut into squares.

  2. Roll the squares around a stick.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give a tender, rich texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown in the oven.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the batter together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds tenderness and mild tang.
Ginger
Supplies the main spiced aroma that defines the gingerbread flavour.

The step that matters

While hot, cut into squares.. Baked gingerbread hardens as it cools, so it becomes brittle and crumbles. Cutting and rolling while it is still warm and pliable prevents cracking and breakage.

Swap the ginger

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

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

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