Skip to main content
Dessert

Cocoanut Pie

A sweet pie made with grated coconut, eggs, sugar, flour, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Cocoanut Pie

Why it works: Cocoa and milk work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 643 recipes. Both carry methyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Cocoanut 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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, combine the grated coconut, egg yolks, sugar, and flour.

  2. Add enough milk to fill the dish and beat the mixture until well combined.

  3. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie dish and bake until browned.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Cocoa + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together643 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Egg yolks
Add richness and help the filling set as it bakes.
Egg whites
Beaten and folded in, they lighten the filling and help it rise and set.
Grated coconut
Provides the main coconut flavour and body to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it brown in the oven.
Flour
Thickens the filling so it holds its shape when baked.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg whites. Beaten whites trap air that gives the pie lift. Stirring them hard knocks that air out, so the filling bakes denser and flatter.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Milletfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Cocoathe original

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

More coconut pie recipes

Filling 5 See all 212 →

You might also like

Coconut PuddingCoconut Pudding26 recipesCoconut CakeCoconut Cake17 recipesCocoa Nut CandyCocoa Nut Candy11 recipesCocoa Nut PuddingCocoa Nut Pudding9 recipes