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Dessert

Ginger Cakes

A baked ginger cake with a sweet sauce made from sugar, egg, butter, flour, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 ↓

Ginger Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the cakes

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

  2. In a bowl, beat the butter, sugar, and eggs until light.

  3. Add the syrup, then the milk and flour, mixing well.

  4. Stir in the spices and finally the baking powder.

  5. Pour the batter into a biscuit pan and bake until golden.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, mix together the sugar, egg, butter, and flour.

  2. Add the boiling water and stir over heat until thickened.

  3. Flavor the sauce with vanilla and serve hot.

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the cake crumb and carries flavor.
Eggs
Add structure and binding to the batter and help it set as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cakes as its starches set during baking.
Syrup
Adds sweetness, moisture, and deep color to the cakes, helping them brown.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cakes rise and become light.

The step that matters

Stirring the sauce over heat until thickened. Flour thickens liquid only when it is heated enough for its starch to swell and gelatinize. Stopping too early leaves the sauce thin, while overheating or stirring poorly can cause lumps or scorching.

Swap the ginger

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

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

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