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Dessert

Fig Cake

A baked cake with sugar, eggs, flour, baking powder, boiling water, raisins, figs, citron, and lemon, topped with powdered sugar frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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 batter

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

  2. Beat sugar and eggs together until well combined.

  3. Sift baking powder with flour and stir into the egg mixture.

  4. Gradually stir in boiling water until smooth.

  5. Pour batter into square tins or layer pans.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

  2. Beat egg white with powdered sugar until thick.

  3. Fold in raisins, chopped figs, citron, and lemon.

  4. Spread frosting between layers if baked in layers, or roll up the cake while hot if baked in square tins.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + figtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

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

  3. Fig + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together763 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  5. Flour + figtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,192 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake once baked.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and turns light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and keep moisture.
Figs
Add fruit sweetness and moisture to the crumb.

The step that matters

Fold in raisins, chopped figs, citron, and lemon. Heavy fruit can sink or make dense spots if folded in roughly; folding gently keeps the batter's air and rise intact while spreading the pieces evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Datesfits better
  3. Apricotfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, flour, raisin, fig. 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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