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Dessert

Cocoanut Loaf Cake

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

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.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter and powdered sugar together until creamy.

  2. Add the sweet milk and mix well.

  3. Sift the baking powder into the flour, then add it to the mixture, alternating with the beaten egg whites.

  4. Fold in the grated coconut.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a square pan and bake for 1 hour.

  2. Frost the cake and cut it into square blocks.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Creams with the sugar to give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Egg whites
Beaten whites add air and lift, helping the cake rise and stay light.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, causing the cake to rise.
Grated coconut
Adds moisture, chewiness and coconut flavor throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Alternating the baking powder and flour with the beaten egg whites. Adding the beaten whites gradually, in alternation with the dry mixture, keeps the air bubbles intact and the batter smooth. Overmixing deflates the whites and can make the cake dense.

“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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