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Dessert

Gingerbread, Thick

A dense gingerbread made with treacle, butter, sugar, flour, ginger, allspice, soda, water, eggs, baked until done.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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, Thick

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. Combine the flour, sugar, ginger, and allspice in a basin.

  2. Warm the butter, add it with the treacle to the dry ingredients, and stir well.

  3. Warm the water slightly, dissolve the carbonate of soda in it, and mix it into the dough with the whisked eggs.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered tin and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes to 1 hour, or longer if the gingerbread is very thick.

  2. Before it is done, brush the top with a beaten egg yolk mixed with a little milk, then return it to the oven to finish baking.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,302 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Treacle
Adds dark sweetness, moisture and a rich flavour to the dough.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the gingerbread together as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness to the crumb.
Carbonate of soda
Reacts with the acidic treacle to produce gas, helping the gingerbread rise.

The step that matters

Baking time for a thick gingerbread. A thick gingerbread can look browned outside while the centre is still wet. Check doneness with a skewer in the middle, and expect longer baking than the stated time when the cake is deep.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cardamomfits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

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