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Dessert

Cocoanut Cup Cake

A moist coconut cake baked in small square tins, finished with a dusting of fine white sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 essence, grated nutmeg, and beaten eggs; mix well.

  3. Stir in the grated coconut.

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

Bake and finish

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

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

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

  4. Ice with fine white sugar if desired.

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. Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + wheattop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together359 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Butter + wheattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,002 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness through creaming with the sugar.
Wheat flour
Provides the structure that holds the stiff batter together when baked.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender crumb when creamed with butter.
Grated coconut
Adds moisture, chewy texture and coconut flavor to the cake.

The step that matters

Adding enough flour for a stiff batter. Flour is the main structure builder. Too little leaves the cake fragile and wet, while too much makes it dense and dry. The batter should be stiff enough to hold its shape in the pan.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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