Skip to main content
Dessert

Cocoanut Cake Made As Jelly Cake

A coconut cake layered with lemon egg yolk jelly and coconut dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Cake Made As Jelly 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.

Make the cake

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

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together 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.

  6. Fold in the whites of 8 eggs, beaten until stiff.

  7. Pour the batter into jelly cake pans and bake until golden.

Make the jelly and dressing

  1. For the jelly, mix the lemon juice, yolks of 3 eggs, and sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over low heat until thickened, stirring constantly to prevent burning.

  3. For the dressing, beat the whites of 6 eggs until stiff.

  4. Fold in the desiccated coconut and powdered sugar.

Assemble and serve

  1. Spread the jelly between layers of cake and top with the coconut dressing.

  2. Cut the cake into diamond shapes.

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. Coconut + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,233 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 light, tender crumb and rich flavour.
Eggs
Whites beaten until stiff add lift and airy structure; yolks thicken the lemon jelly.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as the batter sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and turn lighter.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet jelly and helps it thicken with the yolks.
Desiccated coconut
Adds chewy texture and coconut flavour to the topping.

The step that matters

Cook the jelly over low heat, stirring constantly. Egg yolks thicken gently and can scramble or curdle if overheated, so low heat and constant stirring keep the jelly smooth while it sets.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes