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Cocoa Nut Cakes

A cake made from grated cocoa nut, almonds, sugar, and egg whites, baked until dry and slightly browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cocoa and almond work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 51 recipes. Both carry acetylpyrazine, which smells roast. The science ↓

Cocoa Nut Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the mixture

  1. Grate the fresh cocoa nut and let it dry.

  2. Combine the grated cocoa nut, sweet almonds, bitter almond, and sifted sugar in a bowl.

  3. Add enough beaten egg whites to form a stiff paste.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the mixture into round balls.

  2. Place the balls on a greased baking sheet and bake at 400°F (200°C) until dry and slightly browned.

  3. Transfer the cakes to a cold dish.

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. Cocoa + almondtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together51 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetylpyrazine (roast).

  2. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Almond + eggtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Cocoa + sugartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together956 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Bind the grated nut and sugar into a stiff paste that holds its shape.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cakes brown slightly in the oven.
Fresh cocoa nut
Provides the main coconut flavor and the bulk of the cakes.

The step that matters

Baking until dry and slightly browned. Egg whites set as they heat, and baking drives off moisture so the cakes hold their shape. Underbaking leaves them soft and sticky, while overbaking dries them out and darkens them too much.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Pistachiofits better
  2. Hazelnutfits better
  3. Brazil nutfits better
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, sugar, 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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