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Dessert

Hermit Cake

A moist cake made with eggs, butter, dates, walnuts, flour, sugar, and spices, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Hermit Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, cream the butter and brown sugar together.

  3. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  4. Stir in the chopped dates, walnuts, lemon extract, vanilla extract, and cinnamon.

  5. In a separate bowl, mix the flour and baking soda.

  6. Gradually add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients, mixing until combined.

  7. Add a little water if the batter is too thick.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake for about 1 hour or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Dates + walnuttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together302 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  4. Walnut + vanillatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,730 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and vanilla 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness to the cake crumb.
Butter
Adds fat and tenderness, and carries flavor through the batter.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cake brown and stay soft.
Dates
Add moisture and natural sweetness, keeping the cake tender and chewy.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter's acidity to help the cake rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture. Mixing flour into the batter activates gluten, which toughens the cake if overworked. Stir only until combined so the crumb stays tender.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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