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Dessert

Crystallized Ginger Cakes

A cake made with flour, lard, sugar, ginger, and crystallized sugar for dipping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and buttermilk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Crystallized Ginger Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA sharp oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the dough

  1. Sift together the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and powdered ammonia.

  2. Make a well in the center and add the lard, moist sugar, and ground ginger.

  3. Cream the sugar and lard together until smooth.

  4. Gradually mix in buttermilk to form a dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into rounds.

  2. Wash the tops with milk.

  3. Dip the rounds in crystallized sugar.

  4. Place the coated rounds on greased baking sheets.

  5. Bake in a preheated 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. Flour + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + buttermilktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Cream + buttermilktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together674 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cakes together as they bake.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the dough so the leavening reacts and gives a lighter crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the dough to release gas, helping the cakes rise and brown.
Powdered ammonia
Acts as a leavening agent that releases gas during baking to lighten the texture.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and creates a short, crumbly texture.
Moist sugar
Sweetens the cakes and helps them brown and stay moist.

The step that matters

Creaming the sugar and lard until smooth. Beating fat and sugar together traps air in the dough. Under-creaming leaves the fat in clumps, which gives uneven rising and a dense, patchy texture.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, cream, sugar, buttermilk. 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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