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Dessert

Date Drop Cakes

A sweet cake with dates on top, made from sugar, butter, corn starch, milk, eggs, flour, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Date Drop Cakes

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. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Mix in the corn starch and milk until smooth.

  4. Add the egg yolks and mix well.

  5. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  6. Fold the beaten egg whites into the mixture gently.

  7. Sift together the flour and baking powder, then fold into the batter.

Bake

  1. Fill gem pans with the batter and place a date on top of each.

  2. Bake until light brown.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

Eggs
Whites beaten to stiff peaks trap air, giving the cake lift and a light crumb.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavour.
Flour
Its proteins and starch set during baking, giving the cake its structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the batter rise in the oven.
Corn starch
Softens the crumb and keeps it tender compared with flour alone.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender texture when creamed with butter.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Egg whites hold air only while stiff. Folding gently keeps that air in the batter, so the cake rises well. Stirring vigorously deflates the foam and produces a dense cake.

Swap the dates

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Datesthe original

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