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 ↓
Cocoa-nut 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.
Prepare
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.
Add the milk, baking soda, cream of tartar, and lemon juice; mix well.
Beat in the eggs one at a time.
Gradually add the flour until the batter is smooth.
Bake and assemble
Pour the batter into prepared cake pans and bake until golden.
Once cooled, layer the cake and spread icing between layers, adding grated cocoa-nut.
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.
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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Milk + cocoatop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together643 recipes
Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 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, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavour.
- Sugar
- Creams with butter to aid aeration and adds sweetness and golden browning in the bake.
- Eggs
- Add structure and richness as they set, and help bind the batter.
- Flour
- Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar and lemon juice to help the cake rise.
- Cream of tartar
- Acidic ingredient that reacts with baking soda to produce gas for lift.
The step that matters
Beating in the eggs one at a time. Adding eggs gradually lets each one emulsify fully into the butter and sugar mixture. Adding them all at once can cause curdling, which may leave a coarser, denser crumb.
Swap the cocoa
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, milk, cream, egg, flour, lemon):
- Almondfits better
- Pistachiofits better
- Chestnutfits better
- Cocoathe original
Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, milk, cream, egg, flour, lemon. 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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