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Cocoanut Pie

A sweet pie made with coconut, sugar, eggs, butter, and milk, baked without an upper crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Cocoanut Pie

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. 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. Soak the shredded coconut in sweet milk for 1 hour.

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

Make and bake the pie

  1. In a bowl, mix the sugar, eggs, butter, and soaked coconut with the milk.

  2. Pour the mixture into a pie dish and bake without an upper crust for about 30 minutes.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Coconut + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

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

  3. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the filling and help it set firm as it bakes.
Shredded coconut
Adds bulk, chewy texture and coconut flavor to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it brown lightly in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, tender texture.
Sweet milk
Provides the liquid that custards the eggs and hydrates the coconut.

The step that matters

Soaking the coconut. Soaking lets the coconut absorb milk before baking, so it stays moist and tender rather than drying out and making the pie grainy or dense.

Swap the coconut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, butter, 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.

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