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Dessert

Cocoanut Pie

A sweet coconut pie made with grated coconut, sugar, butter, egg whites, wine, rose water, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Cocoanut Pie

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 Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Cream the butter and powdered sugar until well mixed.

  2. Beat in the white wine and rose water until light.

  3. Gently fold in the grated coconut.

  4. Whip the egg whites until stiff and fold them in with a few gentle strokes.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into pie shells and bake immediately.

  2. Serve cold, dusted with powdered sugar.

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

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

  2. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Coconut + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  4. Rose + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they lighten the filling and give it an airy texture.
Butter
Creamed with the sugar, it adds richness and a tender texture to the filling.
Powdered white sugar
Sweetens the filling and dissolves smoothly into the creamed butter.
Grated coconut
Adds body, chew and coconut flavor to the filling.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites gently. Stiff egg white foam traps air that gives the filling its lightness. Vigorous stirring knocks out that air, so the pie sets dense rather than airy.

Swap the coconut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, egg, white wine, rose, nutmeg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, white wine, rose, 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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