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Dessert

Fig Cake

A layered cake made with sugar, flour, sweet milk, butter, egg whites, baking powder, brown sugar, figs, and an egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and fig match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 373 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. 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 white cake

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

  2. In a bowl, mix 2 cups of sugar, 2 cups of flour, ⅔ cup of sweet milk, ½ cup of softened butter, 5 egg whites, and 2 teaspoons of baking powder until smooth.

  3. Pour the mixture into two round cake tins and bake until golden.

Make the fig layer

  1. For the fig layer, combine 1 cup of brown sugar, ½ cup of butter, 1 cup of flour, 1 cup of chopped figs, ½ cup of sweet milk, 1 egg, and 1 teaspoon of baking powder.

  2. Bake the fig mixture until done.

Assemble and frost

  1. Once cooled, layer the fig cake between the white cakes and frost as desired.

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. Walnut + figtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together373 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

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

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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
Egg whites give the white cake structure and lift as they set in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the cakes rise and become light.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour in both the white cake and the fig layer.
Chopped figs
Add moisture, natural sweetness and chewy texture to the fig layer.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture and a caramel note to the fig layer.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that sets the batter into a cake crumb.

The step that matters

Baking the cakes until golden. Baking until golden browns the surface through the Maillard reaction and sets the crumb. Underbaked centres may collapse or stay gummy, while overbaking dries the cake out.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Hazelnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, milk, butter, egg, fig. 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.

More fig cake recipes

Filling 13Ribbon 4 See all 144 →

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