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Dessert

Cocoanut Pie

A sweet coconut pie with a meringue topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Cocoanut Pie

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 and bake

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream the butter and 1½ cups of sugar together.

  3. Add the egg yolks and whole egg, mixing well.

  4. Stir in the sweet milk, baking soda, cream of tartar, and flour until combined.

  5. Pour the batter into thin pie pans and bake until golden.

Make the coconut mixture

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Gradually add 1 cup of sugar and fold in the desiccated coconut.

Assemble

  1. Layer the coconut mixture between the baked pie layers.

  2. Frosting improves the pie.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  5. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat that makes the layers tender and rich.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter into a set crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the baked layers together.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that lifts the layers.
White sugar
Sweetens the layers and helps them brown as they bake.
Desiccated coconut
Adds chewy texture and coconut flavor to the filling.

The step that matters

Fold the coconut into the beaten egg whites. Beaten egg whites hold air in a foam that gives the filling lightness. Folding gently keeps that air in, while stirring hard would deflate the foam and make the filling dense.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutthe original
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, milk, cream, flour. 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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