The first American cookbook, American Cookery, included a recipe for pound cake. Published in 1785, author Amelia Simmons called for “one pound sugar, one pound butter, one pound flour, one pound or ten eggs, rose water one gill, spices to your taste; watch it well, it will bake in a slow oven in 15 minutes.”
Other than the absurdly short recommended bake time, the recipe hasn’t changed much over the past 200 or so years. Today, not all recipes use exactly a pound of each ingredient, but the 1:1 ratio is often called for. Many recipes also call for more than the traditional six ingredients (if you consider “spices” the equivalent to “salt”), but with the exception of the added key lime ingredients I followed Simmons’ recipe closely. I used 5 egg yolks and 5 whole eggs instead of 10 whole eggs to compensate for the added liquid from the coconut cream.
You could use coconut milk in this recipe instead of coconut cream, but I prefer the richness coconut cream provides. They are made of the same ingredients (coconut and water), and comparatively, coconut cream has more coconut and less water, which means a higher fat content. This higher fat content adds more richness to the entire pound cake, and for that reason, you should want to use coconut cream if you can find it.
