Skip to main content
Dessert

Cocoanut and Date Pudding

A baked pudding made with coconut, dates, egg, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Dates and milk work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 470 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Cocoanut and Date 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.

Prepare

  1. Stone the dates.

  2. Fill a shallow pudding dish with alternate layers of coconut and dates.

  3. Beat the egg well, then add the milk.

  4. Pour the milk mixture over the contents of the dish.

Bake

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

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. Dates + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  3. Egg + datestop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Desiccated cocoanut
Adds sweetness, chewy texture and a toasty flavour as it bakes.
Dates
Provide natural sweetness and a soft, sticky texture throughout the pudding.
Egg
Binds the milk mixture and helps it set into a custard-like pudding.
Milk
Supplies moisture and, with the egg, forms the custard that sets around the fruit and coconut.

The step that matters

Pouring the milk mixture over the layers. The egg and milk need to coat the layers evenly so the custard sets uniformly. Beating the egg well first keeps it blended into the milk rather than leaving streaks of unset egg.

Swap the dates

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonfits about as well
  4. Datesthe original

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

You might also like

Stuffed DatesStuffed Dates32 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes