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Dessert

Fig Cake

A baked cake with a fig filling and boiled icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the cake

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

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the flour and baking powder, then mix in the milk.

  4. Fold in the egg whites gently until combined.

  5. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 25-30 minutes.

Make the filling

  1. Cook the figs, orange juice, lemon juice, and sugar in a saucepan until smooth.

Assemble and finish

  1. Once the cake is cool, split it in half and fill with the fig mixture.

  2. Cover the top with boiled icing.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Fig + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together407 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Fig + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together763 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavor.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as the batter sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and become light.
Egg whites
Add structure and lift to the batter when folded in gently.
Figs
Provide the main fruit flavor and moisture in the filling, cooked down to a smooth paste.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the creamed butter become light and fluffy.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Egg whites hold air that gives the cake its lift. Stirring too vigorously knocks that air out, so the cake bakes up dense instead of light.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Blackberryfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

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