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Dessert

Fig Cake

A layered cake made with butter, flour, sugar, cornstarch, milk, baking powder, egg whites, lemon extract, figs, and vanilla boiled icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fig Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the cake batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the milk and lemon extract, mixing well.

  3. Sift the flour and cornstarch into the mixture and beat thoroughly.

  4. Whisk the egg whites to stiff peaks and gently fold them into the batter along with the baking powder.

  5. Divide the batter into two layers and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes.

Make the fig filling

  1. For the fig filling, chop the figs finely and combine them in a saucepan with sugar and water.

  2. Cook the fig mixture over low heat, stirring constantly until soft and smooth.

Assemble and ice

  1. Allow both the cake layers and fig filling to cool before assembling.

  2. Spread the fig filling between the layers and ice the top and sides with Vanilla 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Lemon + figtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together763 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + figtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,192 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and add tenderness and richness to the crumb.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they give the cake lift and an airy, light structure.
Flour
Builds the cake's structure as its proteins set during baking.
Cornstarch
Softens the flour's gluten, producing a more tender, delicate crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the layers rise.
Figs
Cooked down with sugar and water, they supply the filling's flavor, sweetness and moist body.

The step that matters

Folding the egg whites into the batter. Whipped whites hold the cake's air, so folding gently preserves that volume; vigorous stirring deflates them and leaves a dense, flat layer.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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