Name: Layer Cake Fillings
Ingredients: 1 egg white; 1 tablespoon fine white sugar; 1 cup apple or other fruit pulp, well sweetened and spiced; chopped cooked figs; cornflour; milk; ½ pint custard, medium richness, sweetened and flavored; 1 ounce dissolved butter; cornflour or rice flour

Why it works: Apple and fig match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 238 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Layer Cake Fillings

Ingredients

Directions

Beat the egg white with the sugar until well combined.
Add the fruit pulp and mix well.
For the fig filling, combine chopped figs with their syrup, cornflour, and milk boiled together.
For the custard filling, mix custard with dissolved butter and cornflour or rice flour until thick.
Spread the desired filling on the cake layers.

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.

Apple + figtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together238 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,374 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Fig + milktop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,026 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,104 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

Swap the apple

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

Vanillafits better
Coconutfits better
Peachfits about as well
Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, fig, milk, butter, rice. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.