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Dessert

Cocoanut Drop Cakes

A sweet cake with coconut, sugar, butter, milk, flour, eggs, and baking powder, baked in a pan.

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

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 the batter

  1. Soak the shredded coconut in the milk for 1 hour.

  2. In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

  3. Add the beaten eggs, soaked milk with coconut, and mix well.

  4. Stir in the flour mixed with baking powder until combined.

Bake and finish

  1. Spoon the batter into well-buttered gem pans or patty pans.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

  3. Frost the cakes after they cool.

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. Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

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

  3. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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 sugar to trap air and add tenderness and rich flavour.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the cakes as its proteins set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cakes rise and turn light.
Shredded coconut
Adds chewy texture and coconut flavour, softened by soaking in milk.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the cakes brown as they bake.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour and baking powder until just combined. Overmixing once flour is added develops gluten, making the cakes tough and dense. Mixing only until no dry flour remains keeps them tender and lets the baking powder lift them evenly.

Swap the coconut

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

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

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