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Dessert

Soft Ginger Cakes

Soft ginger cakes are sweet, spiced cakes made with molasses, ginger, and a dough of butter, water, baking soda, alum, and flour.

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine boiling water, butter or lard, baking soda, and alum; let it cool.

  2. Once cooled, stir in molasses, sugar, and ground ginger.

  3. Add enough flour to form a dough that can be rolled out.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough to ½ inch thick, cut into shapes, and place on a baking sheet.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until done.

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. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 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

Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to release gas, helping the cakes rise and stay light.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, deep color and its characteristic flavor to the cakes.
Butter or lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries moisture through the cakes.
Flour
Provides the structure that lets the dough be rolled, cut and hold its shape.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the surface brown during baking.

The step that matters

Add only enough flour to make a rollable dough. Flour proteins form gluten as the dough is worked, and extra flour dries and toughens the dough. Adding just enough keeps the cakes soft rather than dense and hard.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

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