Name: Gingerbread
Ingredients: 1½ cups all-purpose flour; ½ cup butter; ½ cup brown sugar; ½ oz powdered cinnamon; 1 lb treacle (molasses); ½ oz ground ginger; 1 oz candied peel or orange peel, chopped; milk; allspice

Why it works: Cinnamon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Gingerbread

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Rub the butter into the flour.
Add the other ingredients and mix well.

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.

Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,380 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,437 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Ginger + orangetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,833 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,341 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Swap the orange

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

Raisinfits better
Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, cinnamon, molasses, ginger, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.