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Dessert

Cocoanut Mountain Cake

A coconut-flavored cake made with butter, sugar, milk, flour, egg whites, and topped with coconut icing.

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

Cocoanut 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.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

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

  2. Add the milk and mix well.

  3. Gradually add the flour, mixing until smooth.

  4. Beat the egg whites with cream of tartar and baking soda until stiff peaks form.

  5. Gently fold the egg whites into the batter.

Bake

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

Ice and finish

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add the sugar until glossy.

  2. Ice each cake sheet and sprinkle grated coconut over the 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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam that lightens the batter and helps the cake rise and set.
Butter
Adds fat that gives the cake a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and stay tender.
Cream of tartar
Stabilises the whipped egg white foam so it holds its peaks.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to release gas that lifts the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped egg whites trap air that gives the cake its lift. Stirring vigorously or overmixing deflates the foam, so the cake bakes up dense. Fold gently, just until no streaks remain.

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.

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