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Cocoanut Cream Filling

A custard-like filling made with milk, eggs, sugar, salt, heavy cream, and grated coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Cocoanut Cream Filling

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Scald the milk in a double boiler.

  2. Beat the eggs lightly and add a little of the milk to them.

  3. Combine the eggs with the remaining milk, sugar, and salt.

  4. Cook until thick, then set aside to cool.

Finish and fill

  1. Whip the heavy cream and fold it into the custard along with the grated coconut.

  2. Spread the mixture on the cake.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  3. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

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

Eggs
Thicken the custard as they cook and bind it into a set, spreadable filling.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that the eggs thicken.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and adds body to the filling.
Heavy cream
Whipped, it adds lightness and richness to the cooled custard.
Grated coconut
Adds coconut flavour and a chewy texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Cook until thick. Eggs thicken when heated gently but can scramble if overheated, so the custard should be cooked slowly, ideally in a double boiler, and stirred until it coats a spoon. It must then cool before the cream is folded in, or the whipped cream will deflate and the filling will loosen.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits about as well
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Coconutthe original

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