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Dessert

Thick Gingerbread

A dense gingerbread cake made with flour, ginger, sugar, treacle, butter, egg, baking powder, and candied fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Thick Gingerbread

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the baking powder, ginger, and sugar with the flour.

  2. Add warmed treacle, 1 cup of water, the beaten egg, candied fruit, and melted butter.

  3. Mix everything together until well combined.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a well-buttered baking tin, spreading it about 1 inch thick.

  2. Bake immediately for about 30-40 minutes.

  3. Once baked, let it cool for a few minutes before cutting into squares.

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 + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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
Forms the structure of the cake as its starch sets during baking.
Treacle
Adds moisture, dark sweetness and a dense, sticky texture.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the crumb brown.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich mouthfeel.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the gingerbread rises and lightens.

The step that matters

Bake immediately after mixing. Baking powder starts releasing gas as soon as it gets wet, so waiting lets the batter lose lift before it reaches the oven and sets.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

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