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Dessert

Cocoanut Crumb Pudding

A baked coconut and breadcrumb pudding with eggs, butter, milk, sugar, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cocoanut Crumb Pudding

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

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

  2. Melt the butter and mix it with the bread crumbs and shredded coconut.

  3. Pour 1 cup of milk over the mixture and let it stand for 1 hour.

Make the pudding

  1. Add the beaten egg yolks, sugar, remaining milk, salt, and lemon juice to the mixture.

  2. Transfer to a buttered pudding dish and bake for about 30 minutes or until firm.

Top and serve

  1. Top with meringue made from the egg whites flavored with lemon, then brown it.

  2. Serve hot or cold.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Coconut + buttertop 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

Eggs
Egg yolks thicken the milk custard, giving the pudding its set structure when baked.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the milk to form a soft, moist body for the pudding.
Milk
Forms the custard base, providing moisture and a tender, set texture when baked.
Shredded coconut
Adds coconut flavor and a chewy texture to the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the meringue topping brown.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, coating the crumbs for a tender crumb.

The step that matters

Baking until firm. Egg proteins set as they heat, so underbaking leaves the custard loose and overbaking makes it grainy and weeping. Bake only until the center is just firm.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against coconut, egg, butter, sugar, bread, 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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