Skip to main content
Dessert

Cocoanut Custard

A custard made with milk, eggs, butter, sugar, and shredded coconut, topped with a coconut frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Cocoanut Custard

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cocoanut Custard

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.

Make the custard

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

  2. Combine milk, eggs, and butter in a bowl; sweeten to taste.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake until set.

Make the topping and finish

  1. Beat the reserved egg whites in another bowl until stiff peaks form.

  2. Gradually add a little powdered sugar and fold in the shredded coconut.

  3. Spread the coconut mixture over the baked custard and brown it in the oven.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard and provide structure as they cool and firm.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that sets into a soft, creamy custard.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks to make a light, airy frosting topping.
Shredded coconut
Adds texture and flavor to the topping and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake the custard until just set. Eggs thicken as they heat, so overbaking can make the custard curdled, watery, or rubbery. Pull it when the center barely wobbles.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Coconutthe original
  4. Peachfits about as well

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

More coconut custard recipes

Pie 20Baked 15 See all 43 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes