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Cocoanut Cup Cake

A sweet cake made with coconut, sugar, butter, milk, eggs, lemon extract, nutmeg, and flour, baked in small pans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Cocoanut Cup Cake

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 ↓

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

  2. Butter square tin pans and line them with white paper.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  2. Add the milk, lemon extract, grated nutmeg, and beaten eggs; mix well.

  3. Stir in the grated coconut.

  4. Add enough sifted flour to create a rather stiff batter.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into the pans, filling them about an inch deep.

  2. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

  3. Once cooled, cut into small squares or diamonds.

  4. Optionally, frost with a thin icing for added flavor.

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. 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. Nutmeg + coconuttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together411 recipes

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

  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

Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps give it a tender crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and tenderness, and creaming it traps air for a lighter texture.
Eggs
Provide structure as they set in the oven and add moisture and richness to the batter.
Sifted wheat flour
Forms the structure of the batter, setting as the cake bakes.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps hydrate the flour to form the batter.
Grated coconut
Adds moisture, chewy texture and a coconut flavor to the cake.

The step that matters

Stop the flour at a stiff batter. Adding too much flour or overmixing after it goes in develops gluten and makes the cake tough and dense. Stop once the batter is just stiff and combined, so the crumb stays tender.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, milk, nutmeg, egg, meat, coconut. 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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