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Dessert

Cocoanut Pie

A baked pie made with grated coconut, milk, eggs, sugar, wine, crushed cracker, butter, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Cocoanut Pie

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 Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the coconut

  1. Cut off the brown part of the coconut and grate the white part.

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, mix the grated coconut with milk and bring to a boil over low heat for 8 to 10 minutes.

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs and sugar together until frothy, then stir in the wine.

  3. Allow the coconut and milk mixture to cool, then add the egg mixture, crushed cracker, and nutmeg.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into deep pie plates lined with puff pastry.

  2. Bake immediately at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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

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

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

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

  3. Coconut + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving the pie its firm, sliceable body.
Grated coconut
Provides the main flavor and a moist, tender texture in the filling.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the filling and carries the coconut flavor.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the richness of the eggs and coconut.
Crushed cracker
Adds body and helps absorb liquid so the filling holds together.

The step that matters

Bake immediately at 350°F (175°C) until set. The egg mixture is added to a cooled coconut-milk base and should go straight into the oven. Eggs coagulate on heating, so letting the mixture sit can thin it and affect how well the pie sets.

Swap the coconut

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

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

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