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Dessert

Warm Gingerbread

A moist gingerbread cake baked from a batter of molasses, butter, sugar, spices, flour, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Warm Gingerbread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Warm the molasses, butter, brown sugar, and spices together until slightly melted.

  2. Stir the mixture until it forms a yellow-brown cream.

  3. Add the milk, beaten eggs, and flour, and mix well.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into two large shallow pans.

  2. Bake until cooked through and serve fresh with cheese and chocolate.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake's crumb as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness to the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity of molasses to lift and lighten the cake.
Molasses
Adds moisture, deep sweetness, and the dark colour of the cake.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich mouthfeel.

Swap the mace

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

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

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