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Dessert

20-gingerbread

A gingerbread dough made with flour, butter, moist sugar, treacle, ginger, candied peel, optional caraway seeds, baking soda, cream of tartar, and hot water.

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

20-gingerbread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Add the flour to a large basin.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  3. Add the moist sugar and treacle to the melted butter and stir well.

  4. Mix the ground ginger into the flour.

  5. Cut the candied peel and add it to the flour.

  6. Pour the melted butter and treacle mixture onto the flour and stir well.

  7. If desired, add the caraway seeds.

  8. Mix the baking soda and cream of tartar, then add to the gingerbread mixture and stir quickly.

  9. Add the hot water and mix until combined.

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.

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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the gingerbread together as it bakes.
Treacle
Adds moisture, sweetness and dark colour, and helps keep the cake soft.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavour to the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the mixture to produce gas that makes the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acts as an acid that works with the baking soda to help the batter rise.
Ground ginger
Supplies the spiced flavour that defines gingerbread.

The step that matters

Mix the baking soda and cream of tartar, then add quickly. Baking soda and acid begin releasing gas as soon as they meet liquid, so the mixture should be stirred in quickly and baked immediately to keep the rise from being lost.

Swap the caraway

The recipe marks caraway as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, sugar, ginger, cream):

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

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

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