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Dessert

Date Cake— No. 1

A simple cake made with dates, sugar, vanilla, salt, baking powder, flour, and eggs, baked and cut into squares, then rolled in powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and dates 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— No. 1

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix sugar, vanilla, chopped dates, salt, and baking powder.

  2. Add enough flour to form a stiff dough.

  3. Incorporate the eggs and mix well.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the mixture into a flat tin and bake until done.

  2. Once cooled, cut into small squares and roll in powdered sugar.

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. Vanilla + datestop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together218 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

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

  3. Vanilla + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 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).

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

Dates
Provide the bulk of the sweetness and a moist, chewy texture in the cake.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and add structure as the cake sets.
Flour
Forms the stiff dough that gives the cake its body.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes lighter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps tenderize the crumb.

Swap the dates

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

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

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