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Dessert

Gingebbbe Ad-nuts

A sweet biscuit shaped like nuts made with flour, treacle, butter, sugar, candied peel, ginger, coriander, caraway, and ammonium carbonate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and coriander match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,505 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Gingebbbe Ad-nuts

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the dough

  1. Mix the flour, treacle, butter, sugar, candied peel, ground ginger, coriander, and caraway seeds together until well combined.

  2. Stir in the carbonate of ammonia just before placing the mixture in the oven.

Bake

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

  2. Shape the mixture into small nuts and place them on a baking sheet.

  3. Bake for about 20 minutes or until golden brown.

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

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

  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 + coriandertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,973 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 main structure that holds the nuts together as they bake.
Treacle
Adds sweetness, moisture and a dark colour that helps the nuts brown.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps it brown and crisp at the surface.
Carbonate of ammonia
Releases gas as it heats, lifting and lightening the nuts so they spread and crisp.

The step that matters

Stir in the carbonate of ammonia just before baking. Carbonate of ammonia releases gas when heated. If it sits in the dough too long, the gas escapes early and the nuts rise less and turn out denser.

Swap the coriander

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Corianderthe original

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