Why it works: Dates and walnut work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 302 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓
Drop 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
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Make the batter
In a mixing bowl, beat the eggs and sugar together until well combined.
Add the flour and baking powder, and mix until smooth.
Fold in the seeded dates and broken walnuts.
Bake
Pour the batter into a greased baking dish.
Bake for about 20 minutes or until the cake drops.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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.
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Dates + walnuttop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together302 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,873 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + datestop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together675 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
- Bind the batter and provide structure as they set in the oven.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps the eggs whip into a stable, well-combined base.
- Flour
- Provides the structure that holds the cake together once baked.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas in the batter to make the cake rise and turn light.
- Dates
- Add moisture and natural sweetness to the finished cake.
- Walnuts
- Add crunch and a toasty, nutty flavour against the soft crumb.
The step that matters
Bake until the cake drops. Baking for too long dries out the crumb, while underbaking leaves the centre wet and collapsed. The test is that the cake pulls away and drops from a spoon, meaning the structure has set.
Swap the walnut
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, flour, dates):
- Almondfits better
- Chestnutfits better
- Mixed nutsfits about as well
- Walnutthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour, dates. 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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