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Dessert

Ginger Cake

A spiced cake made with flour, treacle, currants, ginger, cinnamon, almonds, and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Ginger Cake

Why it works: Cinnamon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Ginger Cake

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.

Prepare

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

  2. Mix all the dry ingredients together in a bowl.

Make the batter

  1. In a saucepan, combine the eggs, treacle, butter, and sugar.

  2. Heat until melted, then pour the mixture over the dry ingredients.

  3. Mix everything quickly until well combined.

  4. Pour the batter into a well-buttered cake tin.

Bake

  1. Bake for about 45 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Treacle
Adds sweetness, moisture and the dark colour and flavour typical of ginger cake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic treacle to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown and keep moist.

The step that matters

Mix everything quickly until well combined. Once the wet mixture meets the flour and baking soda, the leavening gas starts forming right away. Mixing quickly and only until combined keeps that gas in the batter, so the cake rises well instead of going flat.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, egg, cinnamon, ginger, cream, almond, butter):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, cinnamon, ginger, cream, almond, butter. 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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