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Dessert

Fig Cake

A sweet cake made with figs, sugar, butter, flour, milk, egg whites, baking powder, vanilla, and boiled icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and fig match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 324 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Fig Cake

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.

Prepare the cake

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the milk, flour, baking powder, and vanilla; mix well.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

  5. Divide the batter into two layers.

  6. Bake the layers until golden.

Make the fig filling

  1. Stew the figs with water and sugar for 30 minutes.

Assemble and finish

  1. Layer boiled icing between the cakes.

  2. Add the stewed figs on top of the icing.

  3. Cover the top of the cake with the remaining icing.

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. Vanilla + figtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together324 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Milk + figtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,026 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 sugar to give the cake a tender, fine crumb.
Egg whites
Beaten stiff, they trap air and give the cake lift and a light structure.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's shape as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the layers rise.
Figs
Stewed into a soft, sweet filling that adds moisture and fruity flavour.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Stirring vigorously deflates the air whipped into the egg whites, so the layers rise less and turn denser. Fold gently with a spatula until just combined.

Swap the fig

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

  1. Figthe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Blueberryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, flour, milk, egg, vanilla. 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 fig cake recipes

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