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Dessert

Fig Cake

A layer cake made with butter, egg whites, milk and flour, filled with a cooked paste of figs and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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 the batter

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

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  3. In a separate bowl, cream the butter.

  4. Gradually add the sugar until creamy.

  5. Add the milk.

  6. Mix in the sifted flour and Coin Baking Powder.

  7. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Bake and fill

  1. Pour the batter into three greased cake pans and bake until golden.

  2. For the filling, combine figs, raisins, sugar, and water in a saucepan.

  3. Cook until it thickens into a paste, then let it cool.

  4. Spread the fig filling between the layers of cake.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Fig + raisintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

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

  4. Milk + figtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,026 recipes

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

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

Egg whites
Beaten until stiff, they trap air that lifts the cake and gives it a light crumb.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds fat that gives the cake tenderness and richness.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once mixed with the liquid and eggs.
Coin baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise in the oven.
Figs
Cooked into the filling, they supply moisture, sweetness and body between the layers.

The step that matters

Cook the fig filling until it thickens into a paste. Cooking the figs, raisins, sugar and water drives off moisture and lets the fruit pectin and starches thicken the mixture. Cooling it fully before spreading keeps it from soaking into and softening the cake layers.

Swap the fig

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figthe original
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Lemonfits less well

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