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Dessert

Cocoa-nut Cake

A coconut cake made with eggs, sugar, butter, milk, flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, coconut, and a coconut icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Cocoa-nut Cake

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 ↓

Cocoa-nut 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 batter

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

  2. In a bowl, beat the yolks of the eggs and add the powdered sugar and softened butter.

  3. Mix in the sweet milk, flour, baking soda, and cream of tartar until smooth.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Bake and ice

  1. Pour the batter into jelly pans and bake until golden.

  2. For the icing, beat the egg whites and mix with the grated coconut and powdered sugar.

  3. Spread the icing evenly on the cooled layers of cake.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter, while whipped whites add lift and a light crumb.
Butter
Fat that softens the crumb and adds richness and flavor.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acid that stabilizes the whipped egg whites and works with baking soda to help rising.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and icing and helps give the cake a fine, tender texture.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Whites hold air that gives the cake its lift. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring hard deflates the batter and yields a dense cake.

Swap the coconut

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

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

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