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Dessert

Soft Molasses Gingerbread

A soft gingerbread cake made with molasses, sour milk, butter, and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Soft Molasses 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 batter

  1. In a saucepan, boil the molasses and butter together.

  2. Pour the boiling mixture over the flour in a large bowl.

  3. Add the sour milk and ginger to the flour mixture.

  4. Stir in the baking soda last and mix thoroughly.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick comes out clean.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 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 sets the crumb as the batter bakes.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and the dark, rich colour and flavour typical of gingerbread.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda, helping the cake rise and keeping it tender.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the crumb and gives a richer, moister texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to produce gas that lifts the batter.

The step that matters

Stir in the baking soda last and mix thoroughly. Baking soda starts reacting as soon as it meets acid, so it should be added at the end and mixed evenly. Uneven mixing leaves pockets that over-rise or taste bitter, and waiting leaves the batter with less lift.

Swap the ginger

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

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

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