Skip to main content
Dessert

Scripture Cake

A spiced raisin and fig cake with almonds, baked with flour, sugar, eggs, honey, and water.

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

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Scripture 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.

  2. Add eggs, water, honey, and mix until well combined.

  3. Fold in raisins, figs, and chopped almonds.

  4. Add spices to taste and mix gently.

Bake

  1. Pour batter into a greased baking pan.

  2. Bake for 45-50 minutes 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Fig + almondtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together519 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Fig + honeytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together228 recipes

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

  5. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 the cake sets in the oven.
All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the cake batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown and stay tender.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.
Figs
Add moisture and chewy texture with natural sweetness.

The step that matters

Bake until a toothpick comes out clean. Batter with fruit can look set on the outside while the centre is still wet. Testing the centre with a toothpick shows whether the structure from the eggs and flour has fully set, so the cake is not gummy or sunken.

Swap the fig

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Figthe original
  3. Peachfits less well
  4. Blueberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, raisin, almond, egg, honey. 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.

You might also like

Almond Sponge CakeAlmond Sponge Cake26 recipesAlmond CustardAlmond Custard22 recipesAlmond WafersAlmond Wafers22 recipesCoconut Almond CakeCoconut Almond Cake17 recipes