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Dessert

Cocoanut Loaf Cake

A sweet loaf cake made with butter, egg yolks, sugar, milk, flour, baking powder, egg whites, coconut, lemon, and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Cocoanut Loaf Cake

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 Loaf 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.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Add the egg yolks and beat thoroughly.

  3. Gradually add the sugar while beating continuously until very light.

  4. Slowly mix in the sweet milk.

  5. Sift the flour with the baking powder.

  6. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  7. Add the coconut, lemon juice, and lemon rind to the mixture and beat well.

  8. Alternately add the flour mixture and beaten egg whites to the batter, mixing gently.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into two flat loaf pans.

  2. Dust the tops with powdered sugar and coconut.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Coconut + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Egg yolks
Add richness, moisture and structure to the batter.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks to lighten the batter and help the loaf rise.
Pastry flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together while it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the loaf rises and becomes light.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cake and, beaten with butter, helps create a light texture.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Alternating flour and whipped whites must be mixed gently. Overbeating deflates the air bubbles from the whites, which leads to a denser, flatter loaf.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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

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