Name: Cocoanut Custard Pie
Ingredients: 3 egg yolks; ½ cup sugar; ½ teaspoon nutmeg; ½ teaspoon cinnamon; ¼ teaspoon lemon peel; 1 teaspoon flour; 1 cup milk; 1 cup grated coconut; 8 egg whites

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cocoanut Custard Pie

Ingredients

Directions

In a bowl, mix the egg yolks, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, lemon peel, flour, and milk until well combined.
In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.
Fold the grated coconut and beaten egg whites into the yolk mixture.
Pour the mixture into pastry-lined pie tins.

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.

Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,917 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,950 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Nutmeg + coconuttop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together411 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-pinene (pine, resin).
Cinnamon + coconuttop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together979 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

Swap the coconut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, lemon, flour, milk):

Raisinfits better
Vanillafits better
Blueberryfits better
Coconutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, lemon, flour, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.