Skip to main content
Dessert

Drop Ginger Cake

A moist ginger cake made with butter, eggs, molasses, sugar, baking soda, ginger, cinnamon, boiling water, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Drop Ginger Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar together.

  3. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  4. Stir in the molasses, baking soda, ginger, and cinnamon.

  5. Gradually add boiling water and mix until combined.

  6. Add enough flour to achieve a thick batter similar to pound cake dough.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into greased pans.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven until a toothpick comes out clean.

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. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Molasses + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Creams with the sugar to give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, binding the batter as it sets in the oven.
Molasses
Adds moisture, deep sweetness and a dark color to the cake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the batter as it bakes.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling water. Boiling water added to the batter reacts with the baking soda and molasses, releasing gas for lift. Adding it gradually and mixing until combined keeps the batter evenly aerated and prevents lumps.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

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

You might also like

Ginger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesMolasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesGinger CakeGinger Cake93 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipes