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Dessert

Sugar Cake

A simple butter and sugar cake with ginger, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Sugar Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the cold water and mix well.

  3. Stir in the baking powder and ginger.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough thin and cut into shapes with a tin cutter.

  2. Place on a baking sheet and bake until golden.

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 + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  2. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + gingertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,152 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Butter
Adds fat that makes the dough rich and tender when creamed with sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown to a golden colour in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the cake rise and become light.
Cold water
Adds moisture that binds the mixture into a workable dough.

The step that matters

Baking until golden. Sugar browns quickly at 400°F, so thin cut shapes can darken or burn before they are cooked through. Check the colour often and remove them as soon as they turn golden.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar. 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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