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Dessert

Cream Rose Cake

A light cake flavored with rosewater and coconut, topped with a coconut frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cream Rose Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. Cream the butter and powdered sugar together.

  2. Add the cream and beat until the mixture is fluffy.

  3. Flavor with vanilla.

  4. Gently fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites and flour alternately.

Divide and color

  1. Divide half the batter into three layer cake pans.

  2. Color the remaining batter a delicate pink with fruit coloring.

Bake

  1. Bake all layers until golden.

Finish the coconut and rosewater

  1. Grate the coconut.

  2. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks.

  3. Mix in powdered sugar and rosewater.

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

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

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

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

  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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give a tender, fine crumb.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks to lighten the batter and help the cake rise.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's shape once set.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking to make the layers rise.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the crumb.
Rosewater
Gives the cake its floral aroma.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites and flour alternately. Whipped egg whites hold air that makes the cake light. Heavy stirring knocks that air out and deflates the batter, so fold slowly and alternate with the flour to keep the batter airy.

Swap the coconut

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

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

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