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Dessert

New Orleans Gingerbread

A moist gingerbread cake made with butter, brown sugar, ginger, cinnamon, molasses, milk, orange, flour, cornmeal, eggs, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

New Orleans Gingerbread

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.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter, brown sugar, ginger, cinnamon, and grated orange together until light.

  2. Mix the flour and cornmeal together, then add one-fourth to the butter mixture.

  3. Whisk the eggs until thick, then add them in two halves to the mixture.

  4. Stir the molasses and milk together, then gradually add to the batter.

  5. Add the remaining flour and cornmeal in two halves, mixing well.

  6. Stir in the baking soda, mixing gently to maintain lightness.

Bake

  1. Butter and line a pan with parchment paper, pour in the batter, smooth the top, and bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) 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.

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 + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Ginger + orangetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

  5. Cinnamon + milktop 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
Creams with the sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Whisked until thick, they add structure and lift to the batter.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Fine cornmeal
Adds a slightly grainy, crumbly texture alongside the flour.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep sweetness with a hint of bitterness.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to produce gas that helps the cake rise.

The step that matters

Stir in the baking soda gently. Baking soda starts reacting as soon as it meets acidic molasses, so overmixing knocks out the gas bubbles and can leave the cake dense rather than light.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, ginger, cinnamon, egg, molasses, milk. 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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