Name: Common Ginger Cake
Ingredients: 2 teaspoons baking powder; 2 lbs flour; 8 oz butter; 8 oz sugar; 1 oz ginger; 1 lb raisins; ½ lb treacle; ½ pint milk

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Common Ginger Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

Mix baking powder with flour in a basin.
Rub butter into the flour until well combined.
Add sugar, ginger, raisins, treacle, and milk; mix into a batter.

Bake

Line two 2 lb tins with greased paper.
Pour the batter into the tins and bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) until done.

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.

Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Ginger + raisintop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,242 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,481 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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 that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter: Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.
Baking powder: Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise.
Treacle: Adds moisture, dark colour and rich sweetness that browns during baking.
Sugar: Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and stay moist.
Ginger: Provides the warm, spicy aroma that defines the cake.

Swap the ginger

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

Cinnamonfits better
Nutmegfits better
Jalapenofits about as well
Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, raisin, milk. 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.