Skip to main content
Dessert

Aida's Ooooanut and Almond Cake

A moist cake made with butter, powdered sugar, flour, egg whites, milk, lemon, coconut, nutmeg, almonds, and a sweet almond filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Aida's Ooooanut and Almond 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 batter

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

  2. Cream the butter and powdered sugar together.

  3. Stir in the lemon juice and nutmeg.

  4. Add the milk, then alternately mix in the egg whites and flour.

  5. Slowly and lightly stir in the coconut.

Bake and fill

  1. Divide the batter into three layers and bake until golden.

  2. For the filling, blanch the almonds, cool, and dry them.

  3. Set aside 24 almonds for decoration, then pound or grate the rest.

  4. Mix the grated almonds with 1 cup powdered sugar and 4 egg whites.

  5. Spread the filling between the layers and on top of the cake.

  6. Shred the reserved almonds and use them to decorate the 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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Coconut + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together411 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-pinene (pine, resin).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Beaten stiff, they trap air and give the cake its light, risen structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds richness and a tender crumb.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps give a fine, tender texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the layers together once baked.
Almonds
Ground into the filling, they add body, nutty flavor and moisture.

The step that matters

Slowly and lightly stir in the coconut. Overmixing after the stiffly beaten egg whites are added knocks out the air they hold, so the cake bakes up dense rather than light.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Coconutthe original

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

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes