Skip to main content
Dessert

Peach Blossom Cake

A peach-flavored cake with coconut, pink sugar, and clear icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Peach Blossom 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. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  3. Add the lightly beaten eggs, then mix in the milk and flour.

  4. Flavor the batter with peach extract.

  5. Pour the batter into two square sponge tins.

Assemble and finish

  1. Bake until done, then sandwich the layers with grated coconut and pink sugar.

  2. Frost the top with clear icing and sprinkle with pulverized pink sugar.

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

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

  2. Peach + coconuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together53 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Milk + peachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

  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
Add structure and richness, binding the batter as they set in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat and tenderness, and helps trap air when creamed with sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a fine, tender crumb when creamed.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps form a smooth, pourable batter.

The step that matters

Creaming the butter and sugar. Beating butter and sugar together traps air in the fat, which helps the cake rise and gives it a light, even texture. Under-creaming leaves a denser cake.

Swap the peach

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

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

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

You might also like

Peach Ice CreamPeach Ice Cream64 recipesPeach FrittersPeach Fritters55 recipesPeach MeringuePeach Meringue40 recipesPeach IcePeach Ice16 recipes