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Dessert

Soft Gingerbread

A moist gingerbread cake made with flour, sugar, butter, eggs, ginger, milk, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Soft Gingerbread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks and mix well.

  3. Dissolve the baking powder in the milk and add it to the mixture.

  4. Mix the flour and ginger together, then gradually add to the wet ingredients.

  5. Beat until smooth and well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into flat pans and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the soft crumb together as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the crumb tender and moist.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the crumb tender and rich in flavor.
Eggs
Add structure and binding, setting as the batter bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, lifting it so the gingerbread rises.
Ground ginger
Supplies the warm, spicy aroma that defines gingerbread.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and ginger. Once flour meets liquid, gluten starts to form. Add the flour gradually and mix only until combined. Overbeating toughens the crumb and works against the soft texture this recipe is named for.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, egg, milk. 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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