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Dessert

Soft Gingerbread

A moist gingerbread cake made with sugar, butter, molasses, eggs, buttermilk, spices, and baking soda, baked at 300°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Soft Gingerbread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the sugar and butter until creamy.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks, molasses, and buttermilk (or sour cream).

  3. Stir in the baking soda.

  4. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, lemon zest, ginger, and allspice.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture.

  6. Fold in the whipped egg whites gently.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until a toothpick comes out clean.

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. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + buttermilktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Molasses + buttermilktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and add richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Egg yolks
Add richness, moisture and structure to the batter.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in to lighten the batter and help it rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk or molasses to produce gas that leavens the cake.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, moisture and the characteristic gingerbread flavor.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the crumb as the batter bakes.

The step that matters

Fold in the whipped egg whites gently. Deflating the whipped whites by overmixing removes the air that gives the cake its lift, leaving a dense texture.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, molasses, buttermilk, flour, lemon. 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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