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Dessert

Cocoanut Puffs

A sweet puff made from egg whites, corn flour, powdered sugar, and coconut, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 306 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Cocoanut Puffs

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the mixture

  1. Beat the egg whites until light.

  2. In a saucepan, mix the cornflour and powdered sugar.

  3. Set the saucepan in a pan of boiling water and stir constantly for 20 minutes.

  4. Remove from heat and add the grated coconut, mixing well.

Shape and bake

  1. Drop teaspoonfuls of the mixture onto buttered paper.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until set but not browned.

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. Corn + coconuttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together306 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + coconuttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,315 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they give the puffs their light, airy structure.
Corn flour
Thickens and sets the mixture as it heats, holding the puffs together.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the puffs and dissolves smoothly into the mixture.
Desiccated or grated coconut
Adds coconut flavour and a chewy texture to the puffs.

The step that matters

Stir constantly over boiling water. Constant stirring keeps the corn flour and sugar mixture smooth and evenly heated, preventing lumps and scorching while it thickens into a mass that can be shaped.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits about as well
  4. Coconutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, corn, flour, 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.

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