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Dessert

Sour Milk Ginger Cake

A ginger cake made with sour milk, butter, sugar, flour, baking soda, baking powder, egg, molasses, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sorghum share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 99 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sour Milk Ginger Cake

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. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the beaten egg and sorghum, and cream until smooth.

  3. Sift together the baking soda, baking powder, flour, ginger, and salt.

  4. Add the dry ingredients alternately with the sour milk to the creamed mixture, then beat hard for two minutes.

Bake

  1. Place in a greased and floured pan, optionally sprinkle sugar and cinnamon over the top, and bake at 350°F (175°C).

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. Flour + sorghumtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together99 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sorghum + gingertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together31 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake's crumb as it bakes.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness.
Sorghum or new orleans molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and deep colour to the cake.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to help the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk's acid to produce gas that lifts the batter.

The step that matters

Adding the dry ingredients alternately with the sour milk. Alternating keeps the batter emulsified and prevents overmixing, while the acid-soda reaction starts as soon as they meet, so the batter should go into the pan promptly to trap that gas for a good rise.

Swap the ginger

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

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

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