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Dessert

Cocoa Nut Pudding

A chilled coconut pudding made with milk, corn starch, egg whites, sugar, and flavored with lemon or vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Cocoa Nut Pudding

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 ↓

Cocoa Nut Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan until boiling.

  2. Mix the corn starch with a little cold milk, then add it to the boiling milk.

  3. Stir in the sugar continuously until it forms a smooth paste.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg whites.

  5. Flavor with lemon or vanilla, then mix in the grated coconut.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a mold and refrigerate until set.

  2. Serve with soft custard.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  3. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn starch
Thickens the milk into a smooth paste that holds the pudding together as it sets.
Egg whites
Beaten whites add airy structure and help the pudding set lightly.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding a smooth, glossy body.
Rich milk
Provides the liquid base and richness that the starch thickens.

The step that matters

Stir the starch mixture continuously. Corn starch thickens when heated in liquid and can clump or scorch on the bottom if left unstirred. Constant stirring keeps it smooth before the whites go in.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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