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Dessert

Hard Gingerbread

A baked gingerbread cake made with butter, sugar, sweet milk, egg, ginger, rose-water, flour, and saleratus.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Hard Gingerbread

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 ↓

Hard Gingerbread

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

  3. Add the sweet milk, egg, ginger, and rose-water; mix well.

  4. Gradually add flour to form a dough.

  5. Knead the dough well and roll it out.

Shape and bake

  1. Cut into long cakes and crease them.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven until done.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Ginger + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to give the dough richness and a tender, short texture.
White sugar
Sweetens the dough and, creamed with butter, helps give it body.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds structure as it sets in the oven.
Flour
Forms the dough's main structure once it is kneaded and rolled.
Saleratus
Leavens the dough so it rises and lightens slightly as it bakes.

The step that matters

Knead the dough well and roll it out. Kneading develops the gluten in the flour, which gives the dough enough structure to hold its shape when cut and creased. Too little kneading leaves it crumbly and hard to roll evenly.

Swap the ginger

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

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

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