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Dessert

Fig Cake

A sweet baked cake made with figs, flour, sugar, butter, milk, egg, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and fig match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 373 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Fig 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).

  2. In a bowl, cream together the brown sugar and butter.

  3. Add the flour, chopped figs, sweet milk, egg, and baking powder; mix well.

  4. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

  2. Once cooled, layer the fig cake between light cake layers with frosting.

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. Walnut + figtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together373 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

  3. Fig + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,026 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Walnut + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cake brown and stay tender.
Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and adds fat for a tender crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake as it bakes.
Chopped figs
Add fruit sweetness, moisture, and flavor throughout the batter.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps give it structure and richness.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, lifting the batter so the cake rises.

The step that matters

Pour the batter into a greased cake pan. Thorough greasing keeps the sticky, fruit-rich batter from sticking when the cake is turned out. Even filling helps the cake bake level and evenly.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Hazelnutfits about as well

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