Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. 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.
Make the batter
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Cream together the sugar and butter.
Add the egg whites and mix well.
Stir in the milk, baking soda, cream of tartar, and flour until combined.
Divide the batter into 3 or 4 greased cake tins.
Bake and fill
Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
For the filling, boil the figs, water, and sugar on the stove until it thickens like jelly.
Spread the fig filling between the layers of cake.
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.
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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Milk + figtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,026 recipes
Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 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
- Egg whites
- Add structure and lift to the batter as they set during baking.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the cream of tartar to release gas that makes the cake rise.
- Cream of tartar
- Acidifies the batter so it reacts with the baking soda and helps stabilize the texture.
- Flour
- Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set in the oven.
- Figs
- Provide sweetness, moisture and flavor in the jelly-like filling.
- Butter
- Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the crumb.
The step that matters
Cooking the fig filling until it thickens. Figs contain pectin that sets as the mixture cooks and cools. Stop too early and the filling stays runny and soaks into the layers; cook it too long and it turns stiff and sticky.
Swap the fig
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, egg, milk, cream, flour):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Coconutfits about as well
- Figthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, milk, cream, 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.
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