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Dessert

Hot Water Gingerbread

A gingerbread cake made with butter, lard, brown sugar, molasses, flour, baking soda, salt, ground ginger, eggs, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and molasses are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,225 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Hot Water Gingerbread

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and lard together, then gradually add the brown sugar.

  2. Beat in the eggs until well combined.

  3. Mix the boiling water with the molasses, then add this mixture alternately with the sifted dry ingredients.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased pan and bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 50 to 60 minutes, or 25 to 30 minutes for individual portions.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets in the oven.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color and rich, sweet flavor to the gingerbread.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas that lightens the crumb.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture and a deep caramel flavor to the cake.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter and lard
Add fat for tenderness and a soft, moist texture.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling water and molasses mixture alternately with the dry ingredients. Boiling water melts the fat and dissolves the sugar and soda evenly, and alternating additions keep the batter smooth. Overmixing once flour is added can develop gluten and toughen the crumb.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, molasses, 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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