Skip to main content
Dessert

Gingerbread - Nuts, Rich Sweetmeats

A gingerbread confection shaped like nuts, made with treacle, butter, sugar, ginger, candied peel, spices, egg, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and coriander match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,498 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Gingerbread - Nuts, Rich Sweetmeats

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine the treacle, melted butter, sugar, and ground ginger.

  2. Stir well and add the finely chopped candied peels and the pounded caraway and coriander seeds.

  3. Mix thoroughly, then break in the egg and add enough flour to form a paste.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the mixture into nuts of any size and place them on a baking tray.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 30 to 45 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. Lemon + coriandertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,498 recipes

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

  2. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Ginger + coriandertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Angelica + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together189 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Angelica + carawaytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Treacle
Adds sweetness, moisture and a deep, dark flavour to the dough.
Clarified butter
Adds fat, making the dough rich and helping it bake tender.
Coarse brown sugar
Adds sweetness and molasses flavour, and helps the nuts brown in the oven.
Ground ginger
Provides the main spice aroma and warm flavour of the nuts.
Egg
Binds the dough together, adding structure as it bakes.
Flour
Gives the paste body so the mixture holds its shape when formed into nuts.

The step that matters

Shaping the nuts. The dough is a stiff paste, so flour must be added only until it holds together. Too much flour makes the nuts dry and hard, while too little lets them spread and lose their shape in the oven.

Swap the caraway

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, ginger, orange, angelica, lemon, coriander):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Carawaythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, ginger, orange, angelica, lemon, coriander. 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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesGinger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipes