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Dessert

Compote of Cocoa Nut, White

A compote made from shredded coconut simmered in sugar syrup with lemon juice and flavored with cedrati liqueur.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Coconut and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,233 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Compote of Cocoa Nut, White

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the coconut

  1. Cut the coconut shell into quarters.

  2. Peel off the brown skin.

  3. Slice the coconut into thin slices.

  4. Shred into thread-like pieces.

  5. Soak the shreds in cold water with lemon juice and salt for 1 hour.

  6. Drain the shreds on a sieve.

  7. Wash them to remove excess oil.

Make the syrup and cook the coconut

  1. Boil the sugar until it reaches the blow stage.

  2. Remove from heat.

  3. Add the prepared coconut shreds.

  4. Stir lightly with a fork.

  5. Return to heat and boil again.

  6. Drain the shreds on a sieve.

  7. Add a few drops of lemon juice to the sugar.

  8. Boil to the pearl stage.

  9. Add the coconut again and gently mix.

  10. Drain on a sieve.

Serve

  1. Separate the shreds with two forks.

  2. Arrange the coconut in a compotier.

  3. Pour clear syrup flavored with cedrati liqueur around the base.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Coconut + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Coconut
Forms the main body and chewy, thread-like texture of the compote.
Loaf sugar
Forms the syrup that sweetens the coconut and coats the shreds as it thickens.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sugar's sweetness.
Cedrati liqueur
Adds a citrusy aroma to the flavored syrup served with the coconut.

The step that matters

Boil the sugar to the pearl stage. Sugar syrup thickens quickly as water evaporates. Stopping too early leaves the syrup thin and watery, while boiling too long makes it stiff and sticky, so the shreds will not hold a glossy coating.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Coconutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar. 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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