Skip to main content
Dessert

Ambrosia Cake

A layered cake with coconut, orange, and whipped cream filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Ambrosia 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 3 cups of sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the milk and mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking powder.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture.

  6. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then fold them into the batter.

Bake and assemble

  1. Divide the batter into layers and bake until golden brown.

  2. Once cooled, layer the cakes with whipped cream, grated coconut, and the sugar mixed with the grated rind of one orange.

  3. Flavor with vanilla extract.

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. Coconut + orangetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together584 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the cake a tender crumb and flavor.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Egg whites
Whipped into stiff peaks, they lighten the batter and help it rise.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the layers rise and become airy.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and stay moist.
Whipped cream
Adds moisture and richness between the layers.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiff whites hold air that lifts the batter. Overmixing or deflating them during folding makes the cake dense and flat, so fold gently and only until no white streaks remain.

Swap the orange

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

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

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

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipes