Skip to main content
Dessert

Soft Ginger Bread

A moist ginger bread made with molasses, sugar, eggs, lard, milk, flour, spices, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Soft Ginger Bread

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Soft Ginger Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. In a large bowl, mix together the molasses, baking soda, granulated sugar, and melted lard.

  3. Beat in the eggs and thick milk until well combined.

  4. Gradually add the flour, cinnamon, ginger, and cloves, mixing until smooth.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan.

  2. Bake for about 30-40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

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.

  1. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture, and the characteristic sweet, rich flavor of gingerbread.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity in molasses to produce gas that helps the bread rise and lighten.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the batter into a cake-like crumb as it bakes.
Melted lard
Adds fat, which tenderizes the crumb and carries the spice flavors.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda to the molasses. Baking soda reacts with the acidic molasses to release carbon dioxide. Mixing it in well and baking promptly keeps that gas in the batter so the gingerbread rises evenly instead of staying dense.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, sugar, egg, milk, flour, cinnamon, clove. 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.

More ginger bread recipes

Soft 46Molasses 7Hard 5Sponge 4Colonial 3Pudding 3 See all 65 →

You might also like

Ginger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesMolasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesGinger CakeGinger Cake93 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipes