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Dessert

Sugar Gingerbread

A sweet gingerbread cookie made with butter, sugar, eggs, sour cream, ginger, cinnamon, flour, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. 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.

Make the dough

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and sour cream, mixing well.

  3. Stir in the ginger and cinnamon.

  4. Gradually work in the flour mixed with baking soda until a soft dough forms.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into shapes or place in baking pans.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden, brushing with egg white while hot.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Creams with sugar to add richness and a tender crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps it brown during baking.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness.
Flour
Forms the dough's structure once mixed with liquid.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream or buttermilk to help the dough rise.
Sour cream or buttermilk
Adds moisture and acidity that activates the baking soda.

The step that matters

Gradually working in the flour. Adding flour gradually lets it hydrate evenly and keeps the dough from becoming tough. Overworking flour develops gluten, which makes baked gingerbread dense and hard rather than soft.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

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