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Dessert

Sponge Ginger Cake

A moist ginger sponge cake made with butter, sugar, molasses, milk, flour, eggs, baking soda, and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Sponge 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 the batter

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

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the molasses, ginger, and most of the milk, reserving a little to dissolve the baking soda.

  4. Mix well, then add the flour.

  5. Beat the eggs until light and fluffy and fold them into the mixture.

Bake

  1. Just before pouring into the pan, dissolve the baking soda in the reserved milk and add it to the batter.

  2. Pour the mixture into a prepared pan and bake for 1 hour.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + flourtop 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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Beaten eggs trap air and add structure as the cake sets.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas that lightens the crumb.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once its proteins set in the oven.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to hold air and give a tender, rich texture.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and acidity that activates the baking soda.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda just before baking. Baking soda starts releasing gas as soon as it meets the acidic molasses. Adding it at the last moment, then getting the batter into the oven quickly, keeps that gas in the batter so the cake rises well rather than going flat.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, molasses, milk, flour, 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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