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Dessert

German Date Cake

A dense cake made with dates, chocolate, soda crackers, eggs, sugar, lemon, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Chocolate and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,404 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

German 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 batter

  1. In a bowl, stir together the yolks, sugar, lemon juice, grated lemon rind, dates, and grated chocolate for 15 to 30 minutes.

  2. Add the rolled soda crackers and the beaten egg whites to the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan and bake for 45 minutes or longer.

  2. Frost with chocolate icing before serving.

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. Chocolate + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Chocolate + datestop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together86 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + datestop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together985 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Yolks add richness and the whipped whites lighten the batter and help it rise.
Sweet german chocolate
Adds deep chocolate flavour and sweetness to the cake.
Dates
Add moisture and natural sweetness to the crumb.
Soda crackers
Rolled crumbs add bulk and body, giving the cake structure and a tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps keep the cake moist and tender.
Lemon
Juice and rind add acidity and bright aroma that balance the sweetness.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold air only when whipped properly and kept free of yolk; gently folding them in preserves that air so the cake stays light rather than dense.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Pumpkinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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