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Dessert

Fig Cake

A layered cake made with a batter of sugar, butter, milk, flour, baking powder, egg whites, and a fig filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fig 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.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. Sift the flour before measuring.

  3. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  4. Add the sweet milk, flour, and baking powder to the creamed mixture.

  5. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth. Fold the beaten egg whites into the batter.

  6. Add any desired flavoring.

Bake and fill

  1. Divide the batter into three layers.

  2. Bake the layers.

  3. In a saucepan, combine the chopped figs, water, and ½ cup sugar. Cook for 10 minutes.

  4. Spread the fig mixture between the baked layers.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + figtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,026 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + figtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,192 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Egg whites
Whipped to a stiff froth, they trap air and lift the batter as the cake bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the layers rise and become light.
Butter
Creamed with the sugar, it adds richness and a tender crumb.
Figs
Cooked into a sweet filling that adds moisture and fruit flavor between the layers.

The step that matters

Fold the beaten egg whites into the batter. Folding gently keeps the air in the whipped whites. Stirring or deflating them makes the layers dense instead of light.

Swap the fig

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figthe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, butter, 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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