Skip to main content
Dessert

Ormskirk Gingerbread

A gingerbread cookie dough made with flour, butter, brown sugar, treacle, ginger, baking powder, lemon rind and juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Ginger and lemon 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 ↓

Ormskirk Gingerbread

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 dough

  1. In a bowl, combine the flour and butter, rubbing them together until the mixture resembles shortcrust pastry.

  2. Mix in the brown sugar, ground ginger, and baking powder.

  3. Add the lemon juice and rind, along with the treacle, and mix until a paste forms.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough on a floured surface to about ⅛ inch thick.

  2. Cut out shapes using a round cutter or a wineglass.

  3. Place the cutouts on a baking sheet and bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 15 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. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Molasses + gingertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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 shaped gingerbread together.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to add tenderness and richness to the crumb.
Treacle
Adds moisture, sweetness and deep flavour, and helps the dough bind into a paste.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the gingerbread rises slightly and lightens.
Ground ginger
Supplies the warm, spicy aroma that defines the gingerbread.

The step that matters

Rubbing the butter into the flour. Working the butter into the flour until it resembles shortcrust coats the flour particles with fat, limiting gluten development. Overworking warms the butter and makes the dough tough rather than short and crumbly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesGinger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes