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Dessert

Frosted Ginger Creams

A sweet ginger cake topped with a simple egg white frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and ginger 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 ↓

Frosted Ginger Creams

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 the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix molasses, lard, and sour milk until well combined.

  2. In another bowl, whisk together flour, cinnamon, ginger, and baking soda.

  3. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until smooth.

Bake and frost

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter onto a greased baking sheet.

  2. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until lightly browned.

  3. Let cool before frosting with the reserved egg white.

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. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Molasses + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Molasses + gingertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,116 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 sweetness, moisture, and a deep color that browns during baking.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cakes together as they bake.
Lard
Adds fat that keeps the crumb tender and moist.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda and adds moisture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in sour milk to produce gas that helps the cakes rise.

The step that matters

Bake until lightly browned. Spoonfuls of batter are small and thin, so they can go from lightly browned to dry quickly. Molasses sugars brown fast, so color is a useful guide to doneness.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, flour, milk, cinnamon, egg. 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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