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Dessert

Delicious Cake Filling

A sweet filling made with raisins, almonds, figs, walnuts, coconut, vanilla, and boiled icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Fig and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 324 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Delicious Cake Filling

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop the raisins, almonds, and figs very fine.

  2. Stir the chopped ingredients into the boiled icing.

Assemble the cake

  1. Spread the mixture thickly between two layers of cake baked in a long or square pan.

  2. For the filling, add the chopped raisins, coconut, chopped walnuts, and vanilla to the boiled icing.

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. Fig + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together324 recipes

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

  2. Coconut + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,294 recipes

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

  3. Almond + walnuttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together993 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Almond + figtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together519 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Seeded raisins
Adds sweetness and a chewy, moist texture to the filling.
Blanched almonds
Adds body, a firm bite, and richness to the filling.
Figs
Add sweetness and moisture, and help the filling hold together.
Boiled icing
Binds the chopped fruit and nuts into a thick, spreadable filling.

The step that matters

Chop the raisins, almonds, and figs very fine. Fine pieces spread evenly and bind firmly with the icing. Large chunks can tear the cake layers and make the filling slide out or sit unevenly.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, fig, coconut, walnut, vanilla):

  1. Cherryfits better
  2. Blueberryfits better
  3. Bananafits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, fig, coconut, walnut, vanilla. 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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