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Dessert

Hard Ginger Cakes

Hard Ginger Cakes are a sweet, firm ginger-flavored cake made with flour, sugar, butter, cream, ginger, allspice, and molasses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,620 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Hard Ginger Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the cream, ginger, allspice, and molasses, mixing well.

  3. Gradually add the flour until a dough forms.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough very thin and cut into desired shapes.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven until firm.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Forms the dough structure that sets into firm, crisp cakes when baked.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, creamed with butter, helps give the cakes a tender crumb.
Butter
Provides fat for richness and flavor, and creaming it with sugar traps air for texture.
Molasses
Adds moisture, deep sweetness, and color, and contributes to the firm, chewy texture.
Ginger
Supplies the main spicy aroma that defines the flavor of the cakes.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough very thin. Thin dough dries out and sets firm during baking, while thick dough stays soft in the center. Even thickness also ensures the cakes bake at the same rate.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cardamomfits about as well
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, cream, ginger, molasses. 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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