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Dessert

Cocoanut Pound Cake

A sweet cake made with sugar, butter, flour, eggs, grated coconut, rose water, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Coconut and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 411 recipes. Both carry beta-pinene, which smells pine, resin. The science ↓

Cocoanut Pound Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Butter and line a pan with parchment paper.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter and sugar until very light.

  2. Stir in the rose water and beat in ¼ of the flour.

  3. Beat the eggs well and gradually stir them in.

  4. Add the remaining flour in two parts.

  5. Fold in the grated coconut.

Bake

  1. Pour in the batter and smooth it over with a knife.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until done.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rose + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and lift as the cake sets.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat and tenderness, and traps air when beaten with sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, aerated creamed base.
Grated coconut
Adds moisture, chew, and coconut flavour to the crumb.

The step that matters

Beat the butter and sugar until very light. Creaming beats air into the fat and sugar, and that air expands in the oven to give the cake its lightness. Under-beaten butter and sugar leave a dense, heavy crumb.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Coconutthe original

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

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