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Dessert

Hovis Dietetic Gingerbread

A gingerbread cake made with Hovis flour, sugar, butter, ginger, and other ingredients.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Hovis Dietetic Gingerbread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Mix and rest

  1. Mix all ingredients well.

  2. Leave the mixture overnight to rest.

Bake

  1. Bake in blocks at 350°F (175°C) until cooked through.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Cream + syruptop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 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

Hovis flour
Forms the main structure of the dough as its proteins set during baking.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crumb brown and stay tender.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.
Baking soda
Reacts with acid in the mixture to produce gas that helps the bake rise.
Cream of tartar
Supplies acid that reacts with baking soda, helping the bake rise and keeping it tender.
Syrup
Adds sweetness and moisture, helping the bake stay soft and browning.

The step that matters

Bake in blocks until cooked through. Dense blocks need enough time for heat to reach the centre, or the middle stays gummy while the outside over-browns. Check the centre, not only the surface, before removing from the oven.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

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