Skip to main content
Dessert

Gingerbread

A spiced sweet bread made with flour, butter, sugar, treacle, ginger, candied peel, caraway seeds, baking soda, cream of tartar, and hot water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Gingerbread

Why it works: Flour and caraway match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,435 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Gingerbread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large basin, combine the flour and ground ginger.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan, then add the moist sugar and treacle, stirring well.

  3. Pour the melted mixture into the flour and stir until combined.

  4. Add the chopped candied peel and caraway seeds, mixing well.

  5. Dissolve the baking soda and cream of tartar in the hot water, then add to the mixture and stir quickly.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a shallow buttered baking tin and bake immediately.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Flour + carawaytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Ginger + carawaytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together288 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

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

  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

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the batter together as it bakes.
Treacle
Adds sweetness, dark colour, moisture and a rich, sticky texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar and hot water to produce gas that lightens the crumb.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so the baking soda releases gas for rising.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer flavour in the crumb.
Ground ginger
Supplies the warm, spicy aroma that defines the gingerbread.

The step that matters

Bake immediately after adding the baking soda mixture. Baking soda and cream of tartar begin releasing gas as soon as they meet the liquid. Stirring quickly and getting the batter into the oven at once keeps that gas in the batter, so the cake rises well instead of going flat.

Swap the ginger

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

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

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

More gingerbread recipes

Soft 197Cake 72Nuts 68Molasses 52Pudding 38Cookies 36 See all 364 →

You might also like

Ginger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesGinger CakeGinger Cake93 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesSoft Ginger CakeSoft Ginger Cake56 recipes