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Dessert

Date Cake

A baked cake with dates, nuts, and a sweet cream icing.

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

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Date 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

  1. Crack 2 eggs into a cup and add sour cream.

  2. Pour the egg and sour cream mixture into a mixing bowl.

  3. Add 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1 cup sugar, 1 cup chopped dates, 1 cup chopped nuts, and 2 tablespoons butter to the bowl.

  4. Add flour until the batter is quite stiff, then mix in 2 teaspoons baking powder.

Bake and ice

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) until done.

  2. Mix 1 cup powdered sugar with enough sweet cream to spread smoothly for icing.

  3. Spread the icing over the cooled cake and lay split dates on top.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Dates + nutstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together178 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Nuts + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,180 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 in the oven.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and tenderness and a slight tang to the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Baking powder
Provides additional lift so the cake rises in the oven.
Dates
Add sweetness, chewy texture and moisture to the cake.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.

The step that matters

Adding the flour until the batter is stiff. Too little flour makes a loose batter that spreads and sinks, while too much makes the cake dense and dry. The batter should be stiff enough to hold its shape before baking, so add flour gradually and judge by texture.

Swap the dates

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, sugar, nuts, butter, 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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