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Dessert

Ginger Cakes

A baked ginger cake made with sugar, butter, milk, flour, and grated ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Ginger Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA slack oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the dough

  1. Combine sugar, butter, and milk in a saucepan.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil until the butter melts.

  3. While hot, mix in the flour and grated ginger.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough thinly.

  2. Prick the rolled dough.

  3. Cut the dough into desired shapes.

  4. If the dough becomes stiff, warm it slightly.

  5. Roll out the dough again.

  6. Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven for 30 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cakes brown and stay soft.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the dough a tender texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the shaped dough together.
Grated ginger
Adds the characteristic spicy, aromatic flavour of the cakes.

The step that matters

Warming the dough when it stiffens. Once the dough cools it becomes firm and can crack when rolled or cut. Gently warming it restores pliability so the shapes hold cleanly.

Swap the ginger

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

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

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