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Dessert

Cream Gingerbread

A moist gingerbread cake flavored with ginger, cinnamon, and brown sugar, topped with white sugar.

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 ↓

Cream Gingerbread

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg and mix in the brown sugar and sour cream.

  3. Add the ginger, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt, and stir to combine.

  4. Gradually sift in the flour until the batter is spreadable.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased pan and sprinkle white sugar over the top.

  2. Bake for about 30-35 minutes or 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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Flour
Provides the structure that sets the batter into a cake crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream to produce gas that lifts the cake.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and tang, and its acidity helps the baking soda rise.
Brown sugar
Adds moisture, sweetness and a molasses flavour that deepens the color.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets in the oven.

The step that matters

Gradually sifting in the flour. Adding flour slowly and mixing only until the batter is spreadable avoids overworking the gluten, which would make the cake tough and dense.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, cream, 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.

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