Skip to main content
Dessert

Cocoanut Pudding

A baked coconut pudding topped with a frothy egg white frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and coconut are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,648 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cocoanut Pudding

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 the pudding

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

  2. In a bowl, combine milk, beaten egg yolks, shredded coconut, rolled cracker crumbs, sugar, and flavoring.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake for 30 minutes.

Make the frosting and finish

  1. Beat the egg whites until frothy.

  2. Gradually add 1 cup of sugar to the egg whites and continue beating until stiff peaks form.

  3. Spread the frosting over the pudding after it has baked.

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

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

  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. Coconut + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

Milk
Provides the liquid base that sets into a soft, custard-like pudding.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the pudding as they set during baking.
Rolled cracker crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding body and a light structure.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a stable, stiff meringue frosting.
Shredded coconut
Adds flavour and a chewy texture to the pudding.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks. Egg whites need to be beaten with sugar until stiff peaks form so the meringue holds its shape and does not weep or collapse on the pudding. Under-beaten whites stay runny and slide off the pudding.

Swap the coconut

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

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

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

Baked 5Rum 4Tapioca 4Orange 3 See all 266 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes