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Dessert

Lafayette Cake

A molasses-based cake with butter, brown sugar, eggs, and coconut, topped with jelly, coconut, and icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Coconut and chocolate are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,107 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Lafayette Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a large bowl, mix the flour, molasses, butter, water, brown sugar, baking soda, and eggs until well combined.

  3. Pour the batter into muffin rings and bake until done.

Decorate and finish

  1. Once baked, spread jelly around the edges of each muffin.

  2. Roll the muffins in grated coconut.

  3. Prepare a stiff water icing mixed with jelly and make a ring around the bottom of each muffin.

  4. Fill the center of each muffin with chocolate icing.

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 + chocolatetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  2. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep sweet flavor to the cake.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavor in the crumb.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cake brown.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.

The step that matters

Baking the batter until done. Baking soda reacts quickly once mixed with the acidic molasses, so the batter should go into the oven promptly. Underbaking leaves the center gummy and sunken, while overbaking dries the crumb.

Swap the coconut

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

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

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