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Dessert

To Make Ginger Bread

A sweet loaf made with honey, wine vinegar, ale, ginger, licorice, caraway, red sanders, bread, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon 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 ↓

To Make Ginger Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Heat the honey in a pot until it boils, then remove from heat.

  2. Stir in the white wine vinegar to remove the scum.

  3. Return to heat and add the strong ale.

  4. Mix in the ginger, licorice, caraway seeds, and red sanders, all finely ground.

  5. Allow the mixture to boil, then gradually add the grated bread, mixing well.

Shape and finish

  1. Roll the mixture in ground cinnamon.

  2. Shape the dough into molds or your desired form.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Caraway + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together188 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Ginger + carawaytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together288 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Honey + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,446 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  5. Honey + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,586 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Pure honey
Provides the main sweetness and binds the dough into a moldable mass.
Grated bread
Adds body and absorbs liquid so the mixture can hold its shape.
Strong ale
Adds liquid and a malty depth of flavor to the dough.
Ginger
Contributes the characteristic warm, spicy aroma and flavor.

The step that matters

Allow the mixture to boil, then add the grated bread gradually. Adding bread all at once can leave dry clumps and uneven texture. Gradual addition while mixing lets the bread hydrate evenly and bind into a uniform dough.

Swap the licorice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (honey, white wine, vinegar, ginger, caraway, bread, cinnamon):

  1. Clovefits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Licoricethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against honey, white wine, vinegar, ginger, caraway, bread, cinnamon. 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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