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Dessert

Date Cake

A sweet cake made with dates, nuts, eggs, sugar, flour, baking powder, and whipped cream layers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Date Cake

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Date 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.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the yolks of 5 eggs with 1 cup of sugar until well combined.

  2. Stir in 1 cup of finely chopped dates and 1 cup of finely chopped nuts.

  3. Add 1 tablespoon of sifted flour and 1 teaspoon of baking powder, mixing well.

  4. Fold in the whipped whites of 5 eggs gently.

Bake and assemble

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. Layer the cake with whipped cream between the layers.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Dates + nutstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together178 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Nuts + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,180 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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Egg whites
Whipped and folded in, they trap air and give the cake its light, risen structure.
Egg yolks
Beaten with sugar, they add richness and help bind the batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the cake rise in the oven.
Dates
Finely chopped, they add moisture and natural sweetness to the crumb.
Nuts
Finely chopped, they add texture and a toasty, rich flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and, when beaten with yolks, helps create a smooth, aerated base.

The step that matters

Fold in the whipped egg whites gently. Whipped whites hold air that makes the cake rise. Vigorous stirring knocks that air out, leaving a dense, flat cake.

Swap the dates

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, nuts, flour, cream):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, nuts, flour, cream. 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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