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Dessert

Cocoa-nut Gingerbread

A gingerbread cake made with wheaten and rice flour, treacle, butter, sugar, lemon rind, ginger, and grated cocoa-nut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Cocoa-nut Gingerbread

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slack oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Mix together the wheaten flour, rice flour, lemon rind, and ground ginger.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the treacle, butter, and sugar together until combined.

  3. Pour the nearly boiling mixture over the dry ingredients and beat until smooth.

  4. Let the mixture cool completely, then add the grated cocoa-nut and blend well.

Bake

  1. Drop small heaps of the batter onto a buttered baking tin.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 30 to 45 minutes.

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. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Rice + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,196 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Rice + cocoatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together93 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  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

Wheaten flour
Provides the main structure of the gingerbread batter.
Treacle
Adds sweetness, moisture and a dark, rich colour to the gingerbread.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Grated cocoa-nut
Adds moisture, texture and a toasty coconut flavour to the batter.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool completely before adding the cocoa-nut. Coconut added to a very hot mixture can lose its fresh flavour and texture, and the batter can thin out or become greasy. Cooling first keeps the batter thick enough to hold its shape when dropped onto the tin.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Milletfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, rice, lemon, ginger, butter, sugar. 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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