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Dessert

Gingerbread

A simple gingerbread cookie dough made with flour, ginger, brown sugar, golden syrup, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Gingerbread

Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Gingerbread

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dry and wet mixtures

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder, ginger, and brown sugar.

  2. Melt golden syrup and butter in a saucepan.

Make the dough

  1. Pour the melted mixture over the dry ingredients and stir with a spoon.

  2. Roll the dough to ½ inch thick and place in a flat tin.

Bake and cut

  1. Bake immediately and cut into squares while hot.

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Ginger + syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together950 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the gingerbread together as it sets.
Golden syrup
Adds sweetness and moisture, giving a soft, chewy crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavour.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the gingerbread rises and lightens.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the crust brown.

The step that matters

Cut the squares while hot. Gingerbread firms and becomes brittle as it cools, so cutting while it is still warm keeps the squares clean and prevents cracking.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Jalapenofits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, syrup, butter. 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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