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Dessert

Cocoa-nut Pound Cake

A pound cake made with butter, flour, sugar, grated cocoa-nut, rose-water, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cocoa-nut Pound 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. Peel the brown skin off the cocoa-nut and grate it.

  2. Butter a pan and line the sides with thick, buttered paper.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy.

  2. Whisk the eggs and add them to the butter mixture.

  3. Stir in the flour gradually.

  4. Add the grated cocoa-nut and rose-water, mixing well.

  5. Beat the mixture vigorously for 10 to 15 minutes.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into the prepared pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 3 hours.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Butter + cocoatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together548 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-undecalactone (coconut, creamy).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 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
Creams with sugar to give the cake a rich, tender crumb and fat-based flavour.
Eggs
Provide structure as they set, and help bind and lighten the batter.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its starch sets during baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a creamy, aerated batter when beaten with butter.
Grated cocoa-nut
Adds moisture, body and coconut flavour to the crumb.
Rose-water
Adds a delicate floral aroma to the cake.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture vigorously for 10 to 15 minutes. Vigorous beating incorporates air into the creamed butter, sugar and eggs, which gives the cake lift. Flour is then stirred in gently so the structure stays tender rather than tough.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Cocoathe original

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