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Dessert

Date Tart Cake

A sweet cake made with dates, sugar, eggs, spices, chocolate, lemon, and soda crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Date Tart Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the sugar with the egg yolks until thick.

  2. Add the dates, allspice, cinnamon, grated chocolate, lemon juice and peel, and crushed soda crackers.

  3. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a springform pan and bake.

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. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Dates + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together283 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  4. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Whipped to stiff peaks, they lighten the batter and give the cake its rise and airy structure.
Egg yolks
Beaten with sugar, they add richness and help bind the batter into a thick, smooth base.
Dates
Chopped dates add moisture and natural sweetness, along with a soft, chewy texture.
Soda crackers
Finely crushed crackers act as a light starchy binder that helps the batter hold its structure.
Chocolate
Grated chocolate adds bitterness, depth of flavour and fat for richness.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiffly beaten whites hold trapped air that gives the cake its lift. Stirring them in vigorously or letting them deflate before baking will make the cake dense and flat.

Swap the dates

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, allspice, cinnamon, chocolate, lemon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, allspice, cinnamon, chocolate, lemon. 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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