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Dessert

Soft Ginger Cakes

Soft ginger cakes are spiced cakes made with cinnamon, cloves, mace, baking soda, sugar, molasses, butter, sour cream, and flour.

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, mix together cinnamon, cloves, mace, baking soda, sugar, molasses, butter, and thick sour cream.

  2. Add flour gradually until the mixture is soft enough to be stirred with a spoon.

Bake and store

  1. Drop large spoonfuls onto a greased baking sheet.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until set.

  3. Once cooled, cut apart and store in a jar or can.

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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 molasses and sour cream to lift the cakes and lighten their crumb.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture, and gives the cakes their ginger-cake flavor.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and acidity that helps the baking soda react and keeps the cakes soft.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries the spice flavors.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps brown the surface and soften the texture.
Flour
Provides structure so the dough holds its shape once set in the oven.

The step that matters

Adding the flour gradually. Flour is added until the dough is just soft enough to stir with a spoon. Too much flour makes the cakes dense and dry, while too little leaves them spreading and fragile.

Swap the mace

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

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

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