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Dessert

Gingerbread Cake

A moist cake made with flour, butter, sugar, treacle, ginger, mixed spice, baking powder, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and pumpkin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,158 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Gingerbread Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 300°F (150°C).

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter until creamy.

  2. Add the sugar and eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  3. Stir in the treacle, ginger, and mixed spice.

  4. Mix the baking powder with the flour, then gently fold it into the batter.

Bake

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

  2. Bake for 2 hours or until a toothpick inserted in the center 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 + pumpkintop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,158 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Molasses + gingertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as the batter sets.
Unsalted butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb through fat that coats the flour.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and keep moisture.
Treacle
Adds deep sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during baking to give the cake its structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.

The step that matters

Folding in the flour and baking powder. Overmixing once flour is added develops gluten, making the cake tough and dense. Folding gently keeps the batter light and airy.

Swap the pumpkin

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Pumpkinthe original

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