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Dessert

Soft Gingerbread

A moist gingerbread cake made with sugar, butter, molasses, spices, flour, baking soda, water, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Soft Gingerbread

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, beat together the sugar, butter, molasses, cinnamon, cloves, and ginger until well combined.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in the boiling water.

  3. Add half of the flour to the mixture, then gradually pour in the dissolved baking soda.

  4. Mix in the remaining flour.

  5. Finally, fold in the well-beaten eggs just before baking.

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

Molasses
Provides the dark color, rich sweetness and moist, sticky body typical of gingerbread.
Flour
Forms the gluten structure that gives the batter its body and the baked cake its crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to produce gas, helping the gingerbread rise and soften.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping bind the batter and set during baking.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the crumb.

The step that matters

Fold in the eggs just before baking. Baking soda starts reacting as soon as it meets the acidic molasses and hot water. Adding the eggs last and baking promptly keeps the batter's rising power from being lost before it reaches the oven.

Swap the ginger

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

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

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