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Dessert

Ginger Bread

A sweet bread flavored with ginger, molasses, and sour milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Ginger Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the molasses and beat well.

  3. Mix in the ginger and the beaten egg yolks.

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

  5. Gradually add the flour, then fold in the beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into muffin tins 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.

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
Creams with the sugar to trap air and add richness and tender texture.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark colour and deep sweetness with a mild acidity.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets as the batter bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and the whipped whites help lighten the batter.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds moisture and tenderness.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air bubbles from the whites in the batter. Stirring vigorously would knock out that air and make the muffins denser.

Swap the ginger

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

  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, flour, egg. 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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