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Dessert

Cocoanut Pound Cake

A dense cake made with butter, flour, sugar, coconut, eggs, milk, and lemon peel, baked until done.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Cocoanut Pound Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a good oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter in a mixing bowl.

  2. Gradually add the flour, powdered sugar, baking powder, salt, lemon peel, coconut, eggs, and milk. Mix thoroughly until well combined.

Bake and ice

  1. Butter the cake tins and line them with buttered paper.

  2. Pour the mixture into the tins to a depth of 1.5 inches.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until done.

  4. Once baked, spread icing over the cakes and return them to the oven briefly to dry the icing.

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. Cocoa + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together643 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 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 the sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the cake a fine, even texture when creamed.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Eggs
Add structure, richness and moisture, and help bind the batter.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter to a pourable consistency.

The step that matters

Creaming the butter. Beating butter until light and fluffy traps air bubbles that expand in the oven and help the cake rise. Under-creaming leaves a dense, heavy cake.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Milletfits better
  4. Cocoathe original

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