Skip to main content
Dessert

Date Cake or Substitute with Pitted Prunes

A moist cake made with dates (or prunes), butter, sugar, flour, baking soda, vanilla, and nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Dates and vanilla work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 218 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Date Cake or Substitute with Pitted Prunes

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the date mixture

  1. Combine dates and baking soda in a bowl.

  2. Pour hot water over the date mixture and set aside.

Make the batter

  1. In another bowl, beat together butter and brown sugar.

  2. Add the date mixture, sifted flour, vanilla, and nut meats to the butter mixture.

  3. Pour into a greased baking pan.

Bake

  1. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

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. Dates + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together218 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Dates
Add moisture and natural sweetness, giving the cake its soft, tender body.
Baking soda
Reacts with the dates and hot water to lighten the crumb and help it rise.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and contributes to a deeper flavor and browning.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.

The step that matters

Pour hot water over the date mixture and set aside. Hot water softens the dates and activates the baking soda, which helps the cake rise and gives it a moist crumb. Letting it sit lets the dates soften fully before mixing.

Swap the dates

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, vanilla, meat. 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.

You might also like

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesStuffed DatesStuffed Dates32 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes