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Dessert

Date Cake

A moist cake made with dates, pecans, flour, baking powder, vanilla, eggs, and sugar.

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

Why it works: Dates and vanilla work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 218 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Date Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

  2. Beat eggs and sugar together until well combined.

Make the batter

  1. Roll dates in 3 tablespoons of flour to coat them.

  2. Add the coated dates, remaining flour, and baking powder to the egg mixture.

  3. Stir in pecans and vanilla.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a shallow pan and bake until golden brown.

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. Dates + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together218 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Vanilla and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Dates
Add chewy texture and natural sweetness throughout the cake.
Pecan meats
Add crunch and a toasty, nutty flavor to the batter.
Eggs
Bind the batter and give the cake its structure as they set.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and turns lighter.
Sifted flour
Provides the main structure of the cake as it bakes.

The step that matters

Coat the dates in flour before adding them. Flour on the dates helps keep them suspended in the batter instead of sinking to the bottom while baking.

Swap the dates

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, flour, vanilla, egg, sugar. 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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