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Dessert

Fig Cake

A sweet baked cake with figs and a sugared syrup filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 cake

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and melted butter. Add the eggs and mix well.

  3. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, alternating with the milk.

  5. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 25-30 minutes.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, boil 1 cup of sugar and ½ cup of water for 16 minutes.

  2. Cool the syrup and spread it between the layers of the cake.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Milk + figtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,026 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
Flour
Forms the cake's main structure once its proteins set in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter, helping the baking soda react and stabilising the structure.
Figs
Provide fruit flavour and moisture to the filling.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, alternating with the milk. Adding dry and liquid ingredients in alternating portions keeps the batter smooth and evenly emulsified, which helps the cake bake with a uniform, tender crumb.

Swap the fig

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Figthe original

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