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Dessert

Nut Gingerbread

A gingerbread dough with butter, lard, sugar, molasses, ginger, cinnamon, almonds, sour cream, baking soda, topped with sugar and nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon 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 ↓

Nut Gingerbread

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. Cream together the butter, lard, and sugar.

  2. Add the molasses, ginger, cinnamon, chopped almonds, sour cream, and baking soda.

  3. Mix in enough flour to form a soft dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough to 1 inch thick and cut into squares.

  2. Cover the tops with sugar and chopped nuts.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat and flavour, and helps the dough stay tender and rich.
Lard
Adds fat that keeps the dough tender and short.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the tops brown during baking.
Molasses
Adds dark sweetness, moisture, and a deep gingerbread flavour.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and acidity that works with baking soda to lighten the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream and molasses so the gingerbread rises.

The step that matters

Mix in enough flour to form a soft dough. Adding too much flour makes the dough stiff and dry, producing a tough, dense result. Stopping when the dough is just soft keeps the texture tender.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, molasses, cinnamon, almond, cream, 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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