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Dessert

Cocoanut Pudding

A baked pudding made with milk, lemon rind, shredded coconut, butter, breadcrumbs, eggs, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cocoanut Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the custard base

  1. Boil the milk.

  2. Pour the boiled milk over the breadcrumbs.

  3. Add the butter, sugar, shredded coconut, and lemon rind.

  4. Separate the yolks from the whites of the eggs.

  5. Let the mixture cool slightly.

  6. Add the well-beaten yolks to the mixture.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until set.

  2. Whip the egg whites.

  3. Add 2 tablespoons of sugar to the whipped egg whites.

  4. Pile the whipped egg whites roughly on top of the pudding.

  5. Dredge the top with sugar.

  6. Set in a cool oven at 300°F (150°C) until light brown.

  7. Decorate with colored coconut if desired.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

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

  4. Lemon + coconuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks thicken the base and whites, whipped, form a light meringue topping.
Breadcrumbs
Soak up the hot milk to give the pudding its body and soft crumb.
Milk
Forms the liquid that the breadcrumbs absorb and the eggs set into a custard.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender texture to the pudding.
Shredded coconut
Adds coconut flavor and a slightly chewy texture.

The step that matters

Adding the yolks to the cooled mixture. If the base is still too hot, the egg yolks can scramble rather than blend smoothly. Letting it cool slightly first keeps the custard smooth and lets the eggs set gently in the oven.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Bananafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, coconut, butter, 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.

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