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Dessert

Coconut and Corn Pudding

A baked pudding made with corn, grated coconut, milk, eggs, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 306 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Coconut and Corn Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Cut the corn from the cob.

Make the mixture

  1. Mix the corn with the grated coconut and beaten egg yolks.

  2. Add salt, pepper, and milk to the mixture.

  3. Stir in the beaten egg whites.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a pudding dish.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

  3. Serve as a vegetable.

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. Corn + coconuttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together306 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  3. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

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

  5. Coconut + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together969 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylethanol (rose, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn
Provides the main bulk and natural sweetness of the pudding.
Grated coconut
Adds moisture, fat and a coconut flavour to the pudding.
Eggs
Yolks help bind the mixture while beaten whites lighten its texture and help it set.
Milk
Adds liquid that keeps the mixture moist and softens the baked pudding.

The step that matters

Stir in the beaten egg whites gently. Egg whites hold air that lightens the pudding. Egg proteins set as it bakes, so overbaking can make the pudding dry and curdled.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Cherryfits about as well
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Coconutthe original

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