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Dessert

Ginger-bread Cakes

A sweet cake made with flour, brown sugar, treacle, dripping, ginger, egg, milk, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Ginger-bread Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Grease a small flat Yorkshire pudding tin.

  2. Rub the dripping into the flour.

  3. Sprinkle in the soda, ginger, and sugar.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg in a cup with a little milk, then add it with the treacle to the dry ingredients.

  2. Work in enough milk to make the mixture like a stiff batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into the tin and bake at 300°F (150°C) for about one 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 + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 of the cakes as the batter sets in the oven.
Dripping
Adds fat that gives the cakes a tender, crumbly texture.
Carbonate of soda
Reacts with the acidic treacle to lift and lighten the cakes.
Treacle
Adds sweetness, dark colour, and moisture with a rich flavour.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture while helping the cakes brown.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets during baking.

The step that matters

Work in enough milk to make the mixture like a stiff batter. Too little liquid leaves dry, dense cakes because the flour cannot fully hydrate, while too much makes them heavy and loose. Stopping at a stiff batter gives the right balance of structure and tenderness.

Swap the ginger

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

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

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

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