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Dessert

Hard Gingerbread

A dense gingerbread cake made with flour, sugar, butter, ginger, molasses, and eggs, baked at 350°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Hard Gingerbread

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 ↓

Hard Gingerbread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Mix the flour, sugar, butter, ground ginger, and eggs in a large bowl.

  2. Add the baking soda and seeds if desired.

  3. Combine molasses with milk or water in another bowl to achieve desired thickness.

  4. Stir in the dissolved baking soda, melted butter, ground ginger, and salt.

  5. Combine both mixtures and add enough flour to form a dough.

Bake

  1. Divide the dough into two cakes and roll out.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 20 minutes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Ginger + molassestop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  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.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the dough.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the dough brown as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to help the dough rise and darken.

The step that matters

Adding enough flour to form the dough. The amount of flour sets how stiff the dough becomes. Too little leaves it sticky and hard to roll, while the dough must be firm enough to hold its shape once rolled out.

Swap the ginger

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

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

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