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
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Grate the coconut.
Mix the grated coconut with ½ pound of sugar.
Make the cream
Heat 3 pints of cream and 2 pints of sweet milk in a pot until it boils.
Stir in the grated coconut and additional sugar to taste.
Once cooled, add ⅓ cup of rose water and mix well.
Freeze
Freeze the mixture until solid.
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.
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Cream + milktop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together29,399 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Sugar + rosetop 25% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3,584 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Milk + rosetop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together1,249 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Sugar and milk 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
- Cream
- Provides richness and a smooth, fatty body to the frozen dessert.
- Sweet milk
- Adds liquid and dairy solids that give a creamy, soft-set texture.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the mixture and lowers its freezing point for a softer frozen texture.
- Cocoanut
- Adds coconut flavor and body from its grated flesh.
- Rose water
- Adds a floral aroma to the finished cream.
The step that matters
Add the rose water after cooling. Heat drives off volatile aromatic compounds, so adding rose water to a hot mixture wastes much of its fragrance. Cooling first keeps the floral flavor noticeable.
“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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