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Dessert

Date Cake

A baked cake made with rolled oats, flour, brown sugar, butter, sour milk, baking soda, dates, and hot water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Date Cake

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

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).

Make the dough and filling

  1. In a bowl, mix the rolled oats, flour, brown sugar, butter, sour milk, and baking soda until well combined.

  2. Roll the dough out thinly.

  3. In another bowl, combine the dates, brown sugar, and hot water to make the filling.

Assemble and bake

  1. Spread the date filling between two layers of the rolled dough.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven until golden brown, then let cool.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Oats + datestop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together69 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Oats + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Oats + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,119 recipes

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

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

Rolled oats
Add chewy texture and a nutty, hearty bite to the crust layers.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the dough together when rolled.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and helps the layers brown in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to lift the dough and aid browning.
Dates
Supply the sweet, sticky filling that gives moisture and flavor between the layers.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and deepens flavor in both dough and filling.

The step that matters

Spread the date filling between two layers of the rolled dough. The dough must be rolled thinly and the filling evenly spread so the layers bake through and the sticky filling does not leak or burn.

Swap the dates

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Datesthe original

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