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Dessert

Cocoanut Custard Pie

A custard pie made with milk, eggs, sugar, coconut, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Coconut and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 411 recipes. Both carry beta-pinene, which smells pine, resin. The science ↓

Cocoanut Custard 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

Make the custard

  1. Beat the eggs and sugar together until light.

  2. Add the milk, nutmeg, and grated coconut to the egg mixture.

  3. Pour the mixture into a pie crust.

Bake

  1. Bake until set, about 30-40 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.

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. Coconut + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together411 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-pinene (pine, resin).

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

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

  3. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

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

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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

Eggs
Set the custard into a sliceable structure as they coagulate with heat.
Milk
Provides the liquid base and moisture that the eggs set within.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps lighten the egg mixture when beaten.
Grated coconut
Adds coconut flavour and a chewy, textured body to the filling.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs thicken as their proteins coagulate with heat, so underbaking leaves a runny custard while overbaking can make it weep or turn grainy.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Coconutthe original

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