Skip to main content
Dessert

Soft Ginger Bread

Soft Ginger Bread is a moist, spiced loaf made with brown sugar, molasses, butter, eggs, sour milk, spices, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Soft Ginger Bread

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 Ginger Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and brown sugar together.

  2. Add the molasses and spices.

  3. Beat the eggs and mix them in.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in the sour milk or cream and add it to the mixture.

  5. Gradually stir in the flour until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  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

Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps give the bread its soft, dark texture.
Molasses
Adds moisture, deep flavour and dark colour, and keeps the crumb tender.
Eggs
Add structure and help bind the batter as it sets in the oven.
Sour milk or cream
Adds moisture and acidity, which reacts with the baking soda to lift the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk or cream to produce gas that makes the bread rise.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the batter into a cake-like crumb as it bakes.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in the sour milk or cream. Baking soda needs an acid to react and release gas. Dissolving it fully in the sour milk or cream lets it spread evenly through the batter, so the bread rises uniformly instead of leaving pockets or bitter patches.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Allspicethe original
  3. Cardamomfits about as well
  4. Gingerfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, molasses, egg, milk, cinnamon, clove. 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.

You might also like

Ginger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesMolasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesGinger CakeGinger Cake93 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipes