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Dessert

Fig Cake

A layered cake with a sweet white batter and a spiced gold batter, topped with frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. 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.

Make the white batter

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together 2 cups sugar and ⅔ cup butter.

  3. Add ⅔ cup sweet milk and 3 cups flour, mixing well.

  4. Gently fold in the 8 egg whites.

Make the gold batter

  1. For the gold part, cream together 1 cup sugar and ¾ cup butter.

  2. Mix in ½ cup sweet milk, 7 beaten egg yolks, 1 whole egg, 1 teaspoon allspice, and cinnamon to taste.

  3. Sift in 1½ cups flour and mix until smooth.

Layer and bake

  1. Pour half of the gold batter into a pie tin and layer with halved figs.

  2. Top with the remaining gold batter and bake until golden.

Assemble and frost

  1. Once baked, layer the cakes with frosting while warm, placing the gold between the white layers.

  2. Cover the entire cake 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. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

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

  4. Allspice + figtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together182 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

Eggs
Whites add lift and structure; yolks add richness, colour and tenderness to the gold layer.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds fat for a tender, rich crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and, creamed with butter, helps create a light texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven so the cake rises and becomes light.
Figs
Add moisture and natural sweetness to the layer they are set in.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites hold air that gives the cake its lift. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring hard deflates the batter and yields a denser cake.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovefits about as well
  4. Allspicethe original

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