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Dessert

Cocanut Cake

A layered cake with a coconut custard filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 306 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Cocanut 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 cake

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

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

  3. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  4. Stir in the sweet milk and corn starch.

  5. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda; gradually add to the butter mixture.

  6. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans and bake until golden.

Make the custard and assemble

  1. For the custard, mix the thick sour cream, sugar, grated coconut, and beaten egg in a bowl.

  2. Spread the custard between the layers of the cake like jelly.

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. Corn + coconuttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together306 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

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

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

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

  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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavour.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, binding the batter as it sets in the oven.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so baking soda reacts properly, helping the cake rise and stay tender.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas, leavening the cake.
Thick sour cream
Adds moisture and tang to the coconut custard filling.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and leavening mixture to the butter mixture. Adding the dry ingredients gradually and mixing only until combined keeps the batter smooth and prevents overworking, which would toughen the crumb. Baking soda must be evenly distributed so the cake rises uniformly.

Swap the coconut

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

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

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

More coconut cake recipes

Chocolate 6Filling 4Lemon 4 See all 345 →

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