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Cocoa-nut Paste

A sweet paste made from cocoa-nut, sugar, water, and egg whites, baked until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cocoa-nut Paste

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the coconut

  1. Drain the milk from the cocoa-nut and remove the brown skin.

  2. Shred the white part of the cocoa-nut as finely as possible.

Make the paste

  1. In a saucepan, combine the sugar, water, shredded cocoa-nut, and cocoa-nut milk if sweet.

  2. Boil gently until the syrup thickens.

  3. Add the whisked egg whites and mix well.

Dry and finish

  1. Transfer the paste to a dish and dry it in a 300°F (150°C) oven.

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 + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  2. Cocoa + sugartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together956 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Cocoa + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together582 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the paste and, once boiled into syrup, helps bind the shredded coconut.
Egg whites
Set and bind the mixture, giving the paste structure as it dries.
Cocoa-nut
Supplies the shredded body of the paste and its flavor, with the milk adding moisture if sweet.

The step that matters

Boil gently until the syrup thickens. Sugar syrup thickens as water evaporates and its concentration rises. If it is under-boiled the paste stays wet and sticky; if over-boiled it can turn grainy or hard once dried.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Pecansfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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