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Dessert

Ginger Bread

A moist ginger bread made with molasses, buttermilk, flour, spices, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Ginger Bread

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.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine molasses and buttermilk.

  2. Add flour, baking soda, baking powder, ginger, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, and vanilla extract, then mix until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick comes out clean, about 30-40 minutes.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Provides deep sweetness, dark color, and the characteristic rich gingerbread flavor.
Buttermilk
Adds moisture and acidity that tenderizes the crumb and reacts with the leavening.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the batter into a cake-like crumb as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk and molasses to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Baking powder
Adds additional lift so the batter rises evenly in the oven.
Ground ginger
Supplies the warm, spicy aroma that defines the gingerbread flavor.

Swap the vanilla

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, buttermilk, flour, ginger, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Vanillathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, buttermilk, flour, ginger, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg. 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.

More gingerbread recipes

Soft 197Cake 72Nuts 68Molasses 52Pudding 38Cookies 36 See all 364 →

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