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Bread

Fruit Ginger Bread

A sweet bread made with flour, shortening, molasses, warm water, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, raisins, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and ginger 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 ↓

Fruit Ginger Bread

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Sift baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, and salt into the flour.

  2. Work in the shortening, then add the molasses, warm water, and raisins. Mix until well combined.

  3. Pour the batter into a long tin and bake.

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 + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Ginger + raisintop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the bread together as it bakes.
Shortening
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour, and moisture to the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to produce gas that lifts the batter.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, molasses, cinnamon, raisin):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, molasses, cinnamon, raisin. 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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