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Dessert

Cocoanut Sponge Cake

A light sponge cake flavored with coconut, lemon, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Cocoanut Sponge Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Line square tin pans with buttered paper.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs with the sugar until well combined.

  2. Add the flour, salt, lemon essence, and grated nutmeg; mix well.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until frothy.

  4. Gently fold the egg whites and grated coconut into the yolk mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into the pans, filling them about 1 inch deep.

  2. Bake for 30 minutes or until golden.

  3. Cut into squares and serve.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Nutmeg + coconuttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together411 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-pinene (pine, resin).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Coconut + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Egg whites, whipped and folded in, give the cake its light, airy structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the yolks blend into a smooth, stable base.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten that set the crumb as the cake bakes.
Grated coconut
Adds moisture, chew and coconut flavor to the crumb.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites hold air only when whipped to froth and folded gently. Stirring them hard knocks out the air, so the sponge bakes up dense rather than light.

Swap the coconut

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

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

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