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Dessert

Cocoanut Pudding

A sweet pudding made with milk, cornstarch, sugar, egg whites, vanilla, and grated coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,294 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Cocoanut Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place 1 pint of milk on the stove and bring to a boil.

  2. Dissolve 2 tablespoons of cornstarch in a little milk and add to the boiling milk.

  3. Stir in ½ cup of sugar and mix until smooth.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten whites of 4 eggs and 1 teaspoon of vanilla.

  5. When slightly cool, add ½ of a grated coconut.

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. Vanilla + coconuttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,294 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Cornstarch
Thickens the milk into a smooth, set pudding as it heats.
Egg whites
Add structure and lightness to the pudding once stirred in.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornstarch thickens.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps give it a smooth texture.
Grated coconut
Adds coconut flavour and a chewy texture to the pudding.

The step that matters

Remove from heat and stir in the beaten whites. Adding the egg whites off the heat and only once the milk has cooled slightly helps prevent them from scrambling or cooking unevenly, keeping the pudding smooth and light.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Peachfits about as well
  3. Blueberryfits about as well
  4. Coconutthe original

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