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Dessert

Cocoanut Gingerbread

A gingerbread cake made with flour, treacle, coconut, ginger, butter, sugar, milk, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Coconut and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,168 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Cocoanut 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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, rub together the flour, butter, and sugar.

  2. Melt the treacle and pour it into the flour mixture.

  3. Beat the egg until light, then add the milk and mix well.

  4. Combine all ingredients thoroughly.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a well-buttered tin.

  2. Bake for 1.5 hours.

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. Coconut + gingertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,168 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  3. Coconut + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

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

  4. Coconut + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Forms the structure that holds the gingerbread together as it bakes.
Treacle
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the crumb.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps give it structure as it sets.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic treacle to lift and lighten the batter.

The step that matters

Beating the egg until light. Beating incorporates air into the egg, which adds lift and lightness to the batter before it bakes.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, coconut, egg, sugar, butter, 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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