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Dessert

Cocoanut Pudding

A baked coconut pudding made with bread, milk, eggs, butter, and desiccated coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cocoanut Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the base

  1. Soak the bread in milk.

  2. Separate the yolks from the whites of the eggs.

  3. Beat the yolks into the soaked bread one at a time, adding the butter.

  4. Mix in the desiccated coconut and another pint of milk.

  5. Sweeten to taste.

Bake

  1. Beat the egg whites to a froth and mix them in just before baking.

  2. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) for one hour.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 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

Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the custard, while beaten whites lighten the pudding as it sets.
Bread
Soaked in milk, it softens and thickens the base to give the pudding body.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the bread absorbs and that sets into a custard as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender texture.
Desiccated coconut
Contributes flavour and a chewy texture to the pudding.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Whites beaten to a froth trap air that expands in the oven and lifts the pudding. If they deflate or are mixed in too early, the pudding comes out denser, so they should go in just before baking.

“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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