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Dessert

Thanksgiving Cake

A layered cake with egg yolk batter, frosting, hickory‑nut meats, figs, and grated cocoa‑nut topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and fig match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 763 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Thanksgiving 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 the cake

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the yolks of 3 eggs and mix with 2 cups sugar for 15 minutes. Add the boiling water and mix well.

  3. Sift together the flour and baking powder, then fold into the mixture.

  4. Add the beaten egg whites and lemon extract, mixing gently.

  5. Divide the batter into three layers and bake in jelly‑tins.

Frost and assemble

  1. For the frosting, beat 3 egg whites until stiff, then gradually add 18 tablespoons powdered sugar and mix until cool.

  2. Layer the cake with frosting, adding hickory‑nut meats to the first layer and figs to the second.

  3. Repeat for the third layer, topping with plain frosting and grated cocoa‑nut.

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. Lemon + figtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together763 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + figtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,241 recipes

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

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Whites trap air for lightness, and yolks add richness and structure to the batter.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the layers together once baked.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps keep the cake tender and moist.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the layers rise and become light.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens and thickens the frosting so it spreads and holds its shape.

The step that matters

Folding in the flour and whipped egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air in the beaten egg whites. Overmixing deflates the batter, which can leave the layers dense instead of light.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, flour, lemon, meat, fig. 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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