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Dessert

Sugar Ginger Bread

A sweet gingerbread loaf made with sugar, butter, milk, and ginger, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sugar Ginger Bread

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  2. Add the egg and sweet milk, mixing well.

  3. Stir in the cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt.

  4. Add ginger and lemon flavoring to taste.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish and cut into squares before baking.

  2. Bake for about 25-30 minutes or until 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. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps create a tender, browned crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Egg
Adds structure and binds the batter together.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and helps form a smooth batter.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter and reacts with baking soda to help it rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to produce gas for rising.

The step that matters

Stir in the cream of tartar and baking soda. These two leaveners must be combined into the batter promptly and evenly, because the gas that lifts the cake forms as soon as they meet moisture. Waiting too long before baking lets much of that lift escape, leaving a denser result.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, butter, milk, cream, lemon. 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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