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Dessert

Olive's Gingerbread

A gingerbread cake made with butter, molasses, spices, and flour, baked in a sheet pan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Olive's Gingerbread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Dissolve the baking soda in hot water.

  2. Mix the ingredients in the order given.

  3. Add enough flour to make the batter thicker than pancake batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a sheet pan 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. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Molasses
Adds dark color, rich flavor, sweetness and moisture to the cake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to release gas, helping the cake rise.
Flour
Builds the cake's structure as its proteins set during baking.
Egg
Helps bind the batter and gives the cake structure as it sets.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the crumb tender and moist.

The step that matters

Adding the flour. The batter should be thicker than pancake batter. If it is too thin, it spreads out in the pan and bakes flat and dense, because the flour's starch and proteins have too little structure to hold the cake up as it sets.

Swap the ginger

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

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

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