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Breakfast

No. 8. Breakfast

A steamed cake made with eggs, flour, figs, cinnamon, baking soda, salt, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and fig match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 614 recipes. Both carry cinnamyl acetate, which smells sweet aromatic, cinnamon. The science ↓

No. 8. Breakfast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the crumbs in milk.

  2. Mince the figs.

  3. Beat the eggs until light.

Make the batter

  1. Add soaked crumbs, sugar, cinnamon, baking soda, salt, and figs dredged in flour to the eggs.

  2. Beat the mixture well from bottom to top.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour into a buttered mold, cover tightly, and steam for 3 hours.

  2. Dip the mold in cold water for a second, turn out, and serve with hard sauce.

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. Cinnamon + figtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together614 recipes

    Shared aroma: cinnamyl acetate (sweet aromatic, cinnamon).

  2. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + figtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,192 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Provide structure and lift when beaten, setting the cake as it steams.
Crumbs
Soaked in milk, they add moisture and a tender crumb to the cake.
Figs
Add natural sweetness, moisture and chewy texture throughout the cake.
Flour
Dredging the figs helps keep them suspended evenly in the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to produce gas that helps the cake rise.

The step that matters

Steam tightly covered for the full time. If the mold is not sealed well, steam escapes and the cake can turn out dense and wet. Keeping the lid tight maintains steady, moist heat so the eggs and crumbs set evenly.

Swap the fig

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figthe original
  4. Blueberryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, cinnamon, sugar, butter. 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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