Name: Gingerbread
Ingredients: ginger; sweetmeats; sugar; grated lemon peel; grated orange peel; flour; treacle; clarified butter

Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Gingerbread

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

In a bowl, mix ginger, sweetmeats, sugar, grated lemon peel, and grated orange peel.
Make a well in the center of the flour and pour in the treacle.
Mix everything together using two spoons until well combined.
Prepare baking sheets by cleaning them and warming them in the oven.
Brush the warm sheets lightly with clarified butter using a paste brush.
Drop about 1 teaspoon of the mixture onto the sheets, leaving 2 inches between each drop.
Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for a few minutes until done.
Cool the gingerbread on the sheets before removing them.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Ginger + orangetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,833 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,154 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Swap the ginger

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

Cinnamonfits better
Nutmegfits about as well
Thymefits about as well
Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, orange, flour, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.