Skip to main content
Dessert

Cocoais'ut Mountain Cake

A coconut cake made with butter, sugar, milk, flour, egg whites, almond essence, and coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Almond and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,093 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

Cocoais'ut Mountain 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 cake

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

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the milk and mix well.

  4. Gradually add the flour, then the egg whites, cream of tartar, baking soda, and essence of almond.

  5. Pour the batter into baking sheets and bake until golden.

Ice and finish

  1. For the icing, beat the egg whites and gradually add the sugar until stiff peaks form.

  2. Ice each sheet of cake with the icing and sprinkle grated coconut on top.

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. Almond + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  2. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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, giving the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Egg whites
Add structure and lift to the batter and whip into a stable meringue icing.
Cream of tartar
Stabilises the whipped egg whites so the icing holds stiff peaks.
Baking soda
Reacts with other ingredients to help the cake rise and brown.
Grated coconut
Adds flavour and texture on top of the iced cake.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites with sugar for the icing. Egg whites must be whipped until they form stiff peaks; any trace of fat or yolk prevents them from foaming properly, and undissolved sugar can make the icing weep. Cream of tartar helps stabilise the foam.

Swap the coconut

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

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

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

More coconut cake recipes

Chocolate 6Filling 4Lemon 4 See all 345 →

You might also like

Almond Sponge CakeAlmond Sponge Cake26 recipesAlmond CustardAlmond Custard22 recipesAlmond WafersAlmond Wafers22 recipesCoconut Almond CakeCoconut Almond Cake17 recipes