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Dessert

Cocoanut Cream Pie

A baked pie crust filled with a thickened coconut custard and topped with meringue and toasted coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Cocoanut Cream Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

  1. Heat the sweet milk in a saucepan.

  2. Thicken the milk with corn starch, stirring constantly.

  3. Add the egg yolks and sugar to taste, mixing until very thick.

  4. Stir in the grated cocoanut and pour into the baked pie crust.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites with sugar until stiff to make meringue.

  2. Spread the meringue over the pie and sprinkle with additional cocoanut.

  3. Brown the pie in a 350°F (175°C) oven until golden.

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Corn starch
Thickens the milk into a smooth, sliceable custard as it heats.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the custard, giving it body and richness.
Egg whites
Whip into a stiff foam that forms the meringue topping.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch and yolks thicken into custard.
Fresh grated cocoanut
Adds coconut flavor and chewy texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Thicken the milk with corn starch, stirring constantly. Starch granules can clump and scorch on the bottom of the pan if left unstirred. Constant stirring keeps heat even so the starch swells fully and thickens the custard smoothly.

“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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