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Dessert

Fig Cake

A baked cake with figs, raisins, citron, and lemon, topped with a frosted egg white glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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 batter

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

  2. Beat the sugar and eggs together until well combined.

  3. Sift the baking powder with the flour and stir it into the egg mixture.

  4. Gradually add the boiling water and mix until smooth.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into square tins or layer pans.

  2. Bake until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites with pulverized sugar until thick.

  2. Fold in the raisins, figs, citron, and chopped lemon.

  3. Spread the frosting between layers if baked in layers, or roll up the cake while hot if baked in square tins.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + figtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Fig + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together763 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Flour + figtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,192 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 set into a light, firm structure as the cake bakes.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once heat sets the batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the crumb a tender texture.
Figs
Add sweetness, moisture, and a soft chewy texture to the cake.

The step that matters

Bake until a toothpick comes out clean. Underbaked batter stays wet in the centre and can collapse as it cools, while overbaking dries the crumb. A clean toothpick shows the structure has set.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Datesfits better
  3. Apricotfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, flour, raisin, 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.

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