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Dessert

Cocoanut Cake

A layered coconut cake with a coconut icing made from egg whites and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Cocoanut Cake

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 ↓

Cocoanut 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. In a bowl, beat the yolks of the eggs until well combined.

  3. Add the powdered sugar, butter, and milk to the yolks and mix well.

  4. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until smooth.

  6. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Bake and ice

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

  2. For the icing, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  3. Mix the grated coconut with the powdered sugar and beaten egg whites.

  4. Spread the icing evenly on the cooled 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

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

Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter and whites, beaten and folded in, add lift and a light crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender texture and rich flavor.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas, helping the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter and stabilizes beaten egg whites, helping them hold their volume.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and, in the icing, gives a smooth, sweet coating.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Beaten whites trap air that gives the cake its lift. Vigorous stirring knocks that air out, so the cake bakes up dense instead of light.

Swap the coconut

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

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

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