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Dessert

Soft Ginger Bread

A moist gingerbread loaf made with butter, sugar, molasses, ginger, sour milk, eggs, baking soda, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Soft Ginger Bread

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 Ginger Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the butter, sugar, molasses, and ginger.

  2. Add the sour milk or buttermilk, then the beaten eggs and baking soda.

  3. Gradually mix in the flour and beat hard for about 10 minutes.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into gem pans and bake.

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

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

  2. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Adds fat that makes the crumb tender and rich.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep sweetness to the crumb.
Sour milk or buttermilk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to lift the batter.
Eggs
Add structure and help bind the batter while adding richness.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic milk to produce gas that makes the bread rise.
Flour
Forms the gluten and starch structure that holds the bread's shape.

The step that matters

Beating the batter after adding the flour. Beating develops gluten in the flour, which gives structure. Beating too little leaves the bread dense, while the long beating here is needed to build a firm, well-risen crumb.

Swap the ginger

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

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

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