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Dessert

Coconut Cream Pie

A coconut custard pie topped with meringue and toasted coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Coconut Cream Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, combine egg yolks, salt, cornstarch, and coconut milk.

  2. Add sugar and cook over low heat, stirring until thickened.

  3. Stir in coconut and pour mixture into the baked pie crust.

Top and bake

  1. Beat egg whites until stiff, gradually adding sugar.

  2. Spread meringue over the pie and sprinkle with coconut.

  3. Brown quickly in a 300°F (150°C) oven.

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. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Egg + coconuttop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness and colour to the filling.
Cornstarch
Thickens the coconut milk mixture into a sliceable custard as it cooks.
Coconut milk
Provides the liquid base and the coconut flavour of the filling.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form the stable, airy meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and stabilises the whipped egg white meringue.

The step that matters

Brown quickly in a 300°F (150°C) oven. Meringue is cooked by heat and can weep or turn tough if baked too long. Watch it closely so it browns lightly while the filling stays set.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Coconutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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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