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Dessert

Fig Cake

A sweet loaf made with butter, sugar, eggs, milk, raisins, figs, almonds, honey, flour, baking powder, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,781 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

Fig Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the well-beaten eggs and honey to the mixture.

  3. Soak the raisins and chopped figs in brandy for 30 minutes.

Make the batter

  1. Sift in the flour, baking powder, and salt, then add the soaked fruit.

  2. Mix well, then add the milk and combine thoroughly.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into two loaf pans 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. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  2. Fig + almondtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together519 recipes

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

  3. Fig + honeytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together228 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps create a tender crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to help the cake rise.
Figs
Add sweetness and moisture to the finished cake.

The step that matters

Creaming the butter and sugar. Beating butter and sugar works air into the fat, which helps the cake rise and gives a finer crumb. Under-creaming leaves a denser cake.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, egg, milk, fig, almond, honey):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, milk, fig, almond, honey. 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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