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Dessert

Rich Gingerbread Cakes

A sweet cake made with flour, sugar, butter, treacle, spices, candied peel, almonds, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Rich Gingerbread Cakes

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.

Make the batter

  1. Melt the butter with the treacle and let it cool slightly.

  2. Stir in the beaten eggs and mix well.

  3. Add the flour, sugar, grated nutmeg, pounded mace, cinnamon, pounded ginger, candied peels, and almonds, then mix all ingredients thoroughly.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the mixture into round cakes.

  2. Bake on tins in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 cakes together as they bake.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, giving the cakes a tender crumb.
Treacle
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture, and helps the cakes brown.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and add structure and richness as they set.
Sugar
Sweetens the cakes and contributes to browning in the oven.
Ginger
Supplies the warm, spicy aroma that defines gingerbread.

The step that matters

Bake until golden. Baking in a moderate oven until golden sets the eggs and flour and browns the sugars in the treacle. Underbaked cakes stay soft and sticky in the centre, while overbaked ones turn dry and bitter.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, butter, rose, nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger):

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

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