Skip to main content
Dessert

Cocoanut Puffs

A sweet puff made from beaten egg whites, sugar, corn flour, and grated coconut, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Cocoanut Puffs

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the mixture

  1. Beat the egg whites until very light.

  2. Mix in the sugar and corn flour.

  3. Place the mixture in a custard saucepan or jug, set in a pan of boiling water, and stir constantly for 20 minutes.

  4. Remove from heat and add the grated coconut, mixing well.

Bake

  1. Drop teaspoonfuls of the mixture onto buttered paper.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until set, without browning.

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. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + coconuttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,315 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped to a light foam, they give the puffs their airy, lifted structure.
Fine white sugar
Sweetens the puffs and helps stabilise the whipped egg white foam.
Corn flour
Thickens the mixture as it heats, giving the puffs body so they hold their shape.
Grated coconut
Adds coconut flavour and a chewy, moist texture to the puffs.

The step that matters

Stirring the mixture over boiling water. Constant stirring keeps the egg and corn flour mixture smooth and evenly heated, so it thickens gently without curdling or setting in lumps before it is shaped and baked.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits about as well
  4. Coconutthe original

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

You might also like

Corn CakeCorn Cake90 recipesCorn Starch CakeCorn Starch Cake89 recipesCorn CakesCorn Cakes22 recipesGreen Corn PuddingGreen Corn Pudding14 recipes