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Dessert

Orange Gingerbread

A gingerbread cookie flavored with orange peel, ginger, allspice, and treacle.

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 ↓

Orange Gingerbread

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the dough

  1. Sift the flour into a large bowl.

  2. Add the treacle, candied orange peel, brown sugar, ground ginger, and allspice to the flour.

  3. Melt the butter until it becomes an oil, then mix it into the dry ingredients until well combined.

  4. Cover the mixture and let it rest for 12 hours.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough to about ½ inch thick using minimal flour.

  2. Cut the dough into pieces that are 3 inches long and 2 inches wide.

  3. Use the back of a knife to mark the pieces in a checkerboard pattern.

  4. Place the pieces on a baking sheet, leaving about ¼ inch between them.

  5. Brush the tops with a mixture of the beaten egg yolk and milk.

  6. Bake in a cool oven at 300°F (150°C) for about 15 minutes.

  7. Once baked, gently separate the pieces with a knife if they have stuck together.

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. Orange + gingertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Orange + allspicetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together727 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together after resting.
Treacle or molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep sweetness to the dough.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the gingerbread brown during baking.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Candied orange peel
Adds citrus flavor and chewy pieces throughout the gingerbread.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and, with milk, gives the tops a glossy browned finish.

The step that matters

Bake in a cool oven. Baking at a low temperature for a short time helps the pieces dry and set without over-browning. Sugar-rich dough can scorch quickly at higher heat, and leaving the pieces too close together can cause them to stick.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, molasses, sugar, ginger, allspice, butter, 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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