Skip to main content
Dessert

Mayonnaise Cake

A moist cake made with dates, cocoa, and mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Dates and cinnamon work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 283 recipes. Both carry anethole, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

Mayonnaise 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.

Soak and combine

  1. Soak dates in boiling water with cinnamon for a few minutes.

  2. Sift together sugar, baking soda, cocoa, and salt.

  3. Combine the dry ingredients with the soaked dates and mayonnaise (or oil and egg).

Bake and finish

  1. Fold in chopped nuts and flour until just combined.

  2. Bake in two layers at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick comes out clean.

  3. Cool and frost with whipped cream.

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. Dates + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together283 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  2. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cocoa + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together65 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cocoa + cinnamontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together74 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

Sugar and cinnamon 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

Dates
Add sweetness and moisture, and break down into the batter when soaked.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the cake moist and tender.
Baking soda
Lifts the batter as it reacts with acidic ingredients and releases carbon dioxide.
Cocoa
Provides chocolate flavor and a deep brown color.
Mayonnaise
Supplies fat and egg, adding moisture and a tender crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together once baked.

The step that matters

Fold in the flour and nuts until just combined. Overmixing develops gluten in the flour, which makes the cake tough and dense instead of tender.

Swap the cocoa

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

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

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

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesStuffed DatesStuffed Dates32 recipesCoconut PuddingCoconut Pudding26 recipes