Skip to main content
Dessert

Date Cake

A moist cake made with dates, nuts, and baking soda.

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

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  2. Add the beaten egg and hot water, mixing well.

  3. Stir in the chopped dates.

  4. In a separate bowl, mix the flour with the baking soda.

  5. Add the flour mixture and chopped nuts to the wet ingredients.

  6. Pour the batter into a greased pan.

Bake

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1¼ hours.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Flour + nutstop 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).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the dates and hot water to lift and lighten the batter.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets.
Dates
Add moisture and sweetness throughout the cake.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown during baking.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavor.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda to the flour. Baking soda must be evenly mixed through the flour before it meets the liquid. Uneven distribution leaves pockets that taste bitter or rise unevenly. Mixing it into the flour first spreads it through the batter.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, dates, flour. 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

Stuffed DatesStuffed Dates32 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes