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Dessert

French Date Cake

A baked cake made with eggs, sugar, milk or water, baking powder, flour, dates, walnuts, and a pinch of salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

French Date 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

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

  2. Beat the egg yolks and whites separately until fluffy.

Make and bake the cake

  1. Mix the sugar, milk or water, and baking powder into the egg yolks.

  2. Sift in the flour and add the dates, walnuts, and salt.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

  4. Pour the batter into a thin sheet and bake for 10 to 15 minutes.

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. Dates + walnuttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together302 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + datestop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 trapped by beating give the batter lift and an airy, light structure.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten framework that sets the cake's crumb as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the yolks become smooth and thick when beaten.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the thin sheet rise and stay tender.
Dates
Add moisture and natural sweetness, keeping the cake soft and chewy.
Walnuts
Add fat, crunch and a toasty flavour that contrasts with the soft crumb.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Beaten whites hold air that gives the batter its lift. Folding gently keeps that air in, while vigorous stirring would deflate the foam and leave a dense, flat cake.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Pecansfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

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