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Dessert

Thick Gingerbread

A sweet, spiced loaf made with butter, brown sugar, ginger, allspice, caraway, flour, and treacle, glazed with boiling water and beer.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,620 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Thick Gingerbread

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.

Make the dough

  1. Cream together the butter and brown sugar.

  2. Add the ground ginger, allspice, and caraway seeds, and mix well.

  3. Stir in the flour to form a paste.

  4. Add the hot treacle and mix until combined.

Bake and glaze

  1. Bake in molds at 350°F (175°C) until done.

  2. Glaze the top by dipping it into boiling water and beer.

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. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Caraway + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Allspice + carawaytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together69 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Ginger + carawaytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together288 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Ginger + beertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together210 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat that makes the crumb tender and rich.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the crust brown.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the thick dough together.
Treacle
Adds moisture, dark sweetness and color to the gingerbread.
Ground ginger
Provides the main spicy aroma that defines the gingerbread.

The step that matters

Add the hot treacle and mix until combined. Hot treacle must be fully blended so the sugar and moisture spread evenly through the stiff flour paste. Uneven mixing leaves dry pockets and sticky streaks in the baked gingerbread.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, ginger, caraway, flour, beer):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, ginger, caraway, flour, beer. 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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