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Dessert

Gingerbread Cake

A sweet cake made with flour, treacle, lard, sugar, candied peel, ginger, mixed spice, egg, boiling water, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Gingerbread Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

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

  2. Rub the lard into the flour.

  3. Add the candied peel, mixed spice, ginger, and sugar to the flour mixture.

Make the batter

  1. Melt the treacle and mix the boiling water with the baking soda.

  2. Combine the baking soda mixture with the melted treacle.

  3. Add the treacle mixture and the beaten egg to the dry ingredients.

  4. Pour the batter into a well‑greased tin.

Bake

  1. Bake for 1 hour.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 structure that holds the cake together as it sets.
Treacle
Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture to the cake.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb by coating the flour.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps give the cake its set structure.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic treacle to produce gas that lifts the cake.

The step that matters

Mixing the baking soda with the treacle. Baking soda needs an acid to react and release gas for rising. Adding it to the warm, acidic treacle mixture and then to the batter promptly lets the bubbles form and lift the cake before the batter sets.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, egg. 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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