Skip to main content
Dessert

Cocoanut Pound Cake

A moist pound cake flavored with grated coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Cocoanut Pound 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 the oven

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

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks and mix well.

  3. Gradually add the milk, then the beaten egg whites, and the sifted flour.

  4. Stir in the baking soda and cream of tartar.

  5. Fold in the grated coconut.

Bake

  1. Line the cake pans with buttered paper and pour in the batter.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven until golden brown.

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

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

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

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

  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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and the whites trap air that helps the cake rise.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and gives a rich flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake, softens the crumb, and helps the crust brown.
Milk
Adds moisture that hydrates the flour and keeps the cake from drying out.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to release gas that lifts the batter.

The step that matters

Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beating softens the butter and traps air in it. These air bubbles expand in the oven and help give the cake a light, tender texture, so the mixture should be creamed well before the other ingredients go in.

Swap the coconut

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

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

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

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes