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Dessert

Cocoanut Pound Cake

A pound cake flavored with grated coconut, made with flour, butter, sugar, milk, egg whites, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

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

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

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the flour, butter, sugar, milk, egg whites, baking soda, and cream of tartar until thoroughly combined.

  2. Grate in the coconut and mix well.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake until golden brown.

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. 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown as it bakes.
Egg whites
Add structure and help the cake rise and set.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidic ingredients to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the egg whites and adds acidity that supports rising.

The step that matters

Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake until golden brown.. Greasing the pan keeps the cake from sticking. Baking until golden brown signals that the sugars have caramelized and the structure has set, so the cake is cooked through and not gummy in the center.

Swap the coconut

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

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

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