Why it works: Dates and nuts work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 178 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. 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
Beat the eggs well in a bowl.
Add the powdered sugar and beat again until combined.
Stir in the warm water.
Mix in the flour and baking powder until smooth.
Fold in the chopped dates and nuts.
Bake
Pour the batter into a flat loaf pan.
Bake at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick comes out clean.
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.
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Dates + nutstop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together178 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Flour + nutstop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,180 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + datestop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together675 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
- Eggs
- Bind the batter and give the cake its structure as they set in the oven.
- Flour
- Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and turns light.
- Dates
- Add moisture and natural sweetness to the cake.
- Nuts
- Add texture and a toasty, rich flavor to the crumb.
The step that matters
Bake until a toothpick comes out clean. Baking is judged by the toothpick test, not time alone, because the cake sets as its proteins coagulate and its starches gelatinize. Underbaked centers stay gummy and sink, while overbaking dries the crumb.
Swap the nuts
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, flour, dates):
- Almondfits better
- Chestnutfits better
- Mixed nutsfits better
- Nutsthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour, dates. 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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