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Dessert

A Gingerbread Cake

A gingerbread cake made with flour, treacle, sugar, butter, eggs, spices, citrus peel, brandy, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and coriander match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,505 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

A Gingerbread Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the flour, treacle, sugar, and melted butter.

  2. Beat in the eggs until well mixed.

  3. Add the ginger, caraway seeds, coriander seeds, lemon peel, orange peel, brandy, and salt, and mix all ingredients thoroughly.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into two small cake pans.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick 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.

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 + coriandertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Caraway + coriandertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together185 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-decenal (green, must).

  3. Flour + carawaytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 cake together as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during baking to give the cake its structure.
Unsalted butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Treacle
Adds moisture, sweetness, and deep molasses flavor with some browning.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown while baking.

The step that matters

Bake until a toothpick comes out clean. Baking too briefly leaves wet batter in the center, while overbaking dries the cake. A toothpick test checks that the structure has set without drying it out.

Swap the coriander

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

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

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