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Dessert

Coooanut Pie

A sweet pie made with grated coconut, sugar, butter, eggs, milk, lemon peel, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Coooanut Pie

makes four pies

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Grate the coconut and set aside.

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs and sugar together until well combined.

  3. Add the milk and melted butter to the egg mixture and stir until smooth.

  4. Mix in the grated coconut, lemon peel, and lemon juice.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into pie crusts and bake at 350°F (175°C) until set, about 30-40 minutes.

  2. This recipe makes four pies.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Coconut + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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 structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the eggs blend smoothly into the filling.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that the eggs thicken into a custard.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a smoother texture.
Coconut
Adds flavor and a chewy texture to the custard.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs thicken as they heat, so underbaking leaves a runny filling while overbaking can make it curdle or weep. Check for a set center before removing the pies.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Bananafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against coconut, sugar, butter, 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.

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