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Dessert

Ambrosia Cake

A sweet cake made with sugar, butter, milk, flour, eggs, baking powder, coconut, orange juice and rind, topped with whipped cream.

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

Ambrosia 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the cake

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

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

  3. Add the milk and mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking powder.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, mixing until smooth.

  6. Beat in the eggs one at a time until fully incorporated.

  7. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 25-30 minutes.

Make the filling and finish

  1. For the filling, whip the cream until soft peaks form.

  2. In a bowl, combine the egg white, sugar, orange juice, and grated rind.

  3. Fold the whipped cream into the egg mixture and add coconut to thicken.

  4. Once the cake is cool, fill and frost with the cream mixture.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Orange + coconuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together584 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as the cake sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, giving the cake its rise and light crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour, and creaming it traps air for lightness.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once heated, setting the crumb.
Whipped cream
Gives the filling and frosting a light, airy, moist texture.

The step that matters

Beat in the eggs one at a time until fully incorporated. Adding eggs gradually lets each one emulsify into the creamed butter and sugar. Adding them too quickly can cause the batter to curdle or separate, which affects the final texture.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

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