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Dessert

Fig Cake

A sweet cake made with figs, sugar, flour, milk, butter, eggs, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Make the fig paste

  1. Chop the figs finely.

  2. In a pan, combine the chopped figs, 1 cup of sugar, and 1 cup of water.

  3. Cook slowly until it forms a thick paste.

Make and bake the cake

  1. Mix the cake batter as you would for other cakes.

  2. Bake in jelly cake tins.

Assemble and ice

  1. Spread the fig paste between the layers of the cake.

  2. Ice the top and sides of the cake.

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. Flour + buttertop 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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake's crumb together.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich texture in the crumb.
Egg whites
Add structure and lift to the batter as they set in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises in the oven.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps form a smooth, pourable batter.
Figs
Provide the sweet, thick filling that sits between the cake layers.

The step that matters

Cooking the fig paste slowly. Cooking slowly lets the figs soften and the water evaporate gradually, so the paste thickens evenly. Rushing with high heat can scorch the sugars and fruit sugars, leaving a bitter taste and an uneven, sticky filling that may not hold between the layers.

Swap the fig

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

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

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