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Dessert

Cocoantit Ice Cream

A chilled dessert made from cream, milk, eggs, sugar, coconut, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Cocoantit Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Beat together the eggs and grated lemon rind.

  2. Combine the egg mixture with the milk in a double boiler.

  3. Stir until the mixture begins to thicken.

  4. Add the coconut and let it cool.

Finish and freeze

  1. Once cool, add the sugar, lemon juice, and cream.

  2. Freeze the mixture.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

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

  3. Coconut + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 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
Thicken the custard base as they gently set when heated, giving the ice cream body.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the frozen ice cream a smooth, creamy texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, adding moisture and milky flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer when frozen.
Prepared coconut
Contributes coconut flavour and some fat, adding aroma and texture to the base.

The step that matters

Stir the custard until it just begins to thicken. Egg proteins set with gentle heat, so overheating in the double boiler can curdle the eggs and leave a grainy texture instead of a smooth custard.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Bananafits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, milk, egg, sugar, coconut. 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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