Skip to main content
Dessert

Gingerbread for Voyages or Travelling

A gingerbread mixture of treacle, flour, sugar, spices, and nuts baked into small cakes or nuts.

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

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 ↓

Gingerbread for Voyages or Travelling

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Mix and shape

  1. Mix treacle, flour, sugar, ginger, allspice, orange peel, caraway seeds, citron, and almonds until well combined.

  2. Shape the mixture into small cakes or nuts.

Bake and dry

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until done.

  2. For a firmer texture, dry the baked goods in a cool oven.

  3. Knead in more butter and treacle as needed, along with additional fruit and spices.

  4. Bake again without burning.

  5. Dip in spirits of wine with a few drops of caraway, cinnamon, or clove essence.

  6. Dry in the oven.

  7. Wash with isinglass and sugar or egg white.

  8. Dry again.

Finish and store

  1. Wrap tightly in writing paper.

  2. Pack in a lined box to keep for years.

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. Ginger + orangetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Allspice + orangetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together727 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Orange + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Treacle
Adds moisture, sweetness and a dark colour to the dough.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the shaped cakes together.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and richer flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake again without burning. The dough is rich in sugar and treacle, which brown and then burn quickly at high heat. Keeping the oven gentle lets the pieces dry and firm through without turning bitter or dark.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Lemonfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, ginger, allspice, caraway, almond, butter. 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

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesGinger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipes