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Dessert

Fig Cake

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

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

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.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add flavoring of your choice and the well-beaten eggs.

  3. Mix in part of the flour with the salt and baking powder sifted in.

  4. Add the milk and the rest of the flour, then beat thoroughly for ten minutes.

Bake

  1. Bake in glass pans at 350°F (175°C) until done.

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. Fig + milktop 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. Fig + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,192 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 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

Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter set as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the cake its structure.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor, and traps air when creamed with sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender crumb when creamed with butter.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the heat, making the cake rise and become light.
Figs
Add fruit flavor and moisture to the batter.

The step that matters

Beat thoroughly for ten minutes. Extended beating develops gluten in the flour, which gives a firmer, chewier crumb. Beating too long after the flour is added can make the cake tough, so the flour should be mixed in deliberately.

Swap the fig

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

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

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