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Dessert

Variety Cake

A layered coconut cake with walnut and fig layers, frosted with a powdered-sugar egg white icing and topped with grated coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Variety Cake

Why it works: Walnut and fig match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 373 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Variety Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cake layers

  1. Prepare a batter as you would for coconut cake.

  2. Bake five layers in jelly tins.

  3. For the first layer, mix the batter with rolled walnuts.

  4. For the second layer, mix the batter with fine-sliced figs.

  5. For the third layer, mix the batter with rolled walnuts.

  6. For the fourth layer, mix the batter with fine-sliced figs.

Make the frosting

  1. Beat the egg whites for the frosting.

  2. Gradually add powdered sugar and baking powder to the beaten egg whites.

Assemble and finish

  1. Spread plain frosting on the top and sides of the assembled cake.

  2. Cover the cake with grated coconut.

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.

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.

  1. Walnut + figtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together373 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Coconut + walnuttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  3. Coconut + figtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together88 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Sugar + figtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,241 recipes

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Beaten to form the foam that gives the plain frosting its light, airy structure.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the frosting and helps it set firm once it is combined with the beaten whites.
Baking powder
Releases gas to help the frosting mixture lighten and rise.
Rolled english walnuts
Add crunch and a nutty flavor to the layers they are mixed into.
Fine-sliced figs
Add moisture and natural sweetness to the layers they are mixed into.

The step that matters

Gradually add powdered sugar and baking powder to the beaten egg whites.. Adding the sugar slowly lets it dissolve into the whites and keeps the foam stable. Adding it all at once can collapse the foam and leave the frosting dense and grainy.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Datesfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Coconutthe original

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