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Dessert

Date Cake

A baked oat and flour cake filled with cooked dates.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Date Cake

Why it works: Oats and dates share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 69 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

Date 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 dough

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

  2. In a large bowl, mix the rolled oats, flour, shortening, sugar, salt, and baking soda.

  3. Add buttermilk gradually until the dough is moist but not sticky.

Assemble and bake

  1. Roll out half of the dough and line a baking pan with it.

  2. For the filling, cook the pitted dates with a little water and sweeten to taste.

  3. Spread the date filling over the dough in the pan.

  4. Roll out the remaining dough and cover the filling.

  5. Bake until golden brown, then cut into squares.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Oats + datestop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together69 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  2. Flour + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + buttermilktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + datestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Rolled oats
Form the bulk of the crumbly, hearty base and top layers.
Flour
Provides structure so the dough holds together when rolled and cut.
Shortening
Adds fat that tenderizes the dough and helps it brown in the oven.
Buttermilk
Moistens the dry mixture so the dough can be rolled out.
Dates
Provide the sweet, thick filling that sets as the bars cool.

The step that matters

Add buttermilk gradually. Adding liquid slowly lets the oats and flour absorb it evenly. Too much at once makes the dough sticky and hard to roll, while too little leaves it crumbly and prone to cracking.

Swap the dates

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oats, flour, sugar, buttermilk):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oats, flour, sugar, buttermilk. 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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