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Dessert

Soft Gingerbread

A moist gingerbread cake made with molasses, ginger, butter, flour, currants, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,324 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Soft Gingerbread

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine molasses, warm water, ginger, baking soda, and softened butter.

  2. Gradually stir in enough flour to make a thin batter.

Mix and bake

  1. In another bowl, beat the butter until creamy, then add brown sugar and mix well.

  2. Beat the egg whites and yolks separately, then combine them with the butter and sugar mixture.

  3. Rub half the flour into the currants, then mix everything together.

  4. Pour the batter into a prepared baking pan and bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) for about 4 hours.

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 + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Molasses + gingertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and flour 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

Molasses
Adds dark colour, moisture and deep sweetness to the gingerbread crumb.
Eggs
Provide structure and richness, and whipped whites add lift to the batter.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries the spices' flavour.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to produce gas, helping the cake rise.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the batter's moisture and fat together.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the crumb brown during baking.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites and yolks separately, then combine them with the butter and sugar mixture.. Whipped egg whites trap air that expands in the oven and lifts the cake. Folding them in gently, rather than stirring hard, keeps that air from being lost.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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