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Dessert

Cocoa-nut Pudding

A baked pudding made from grated coconut, milk, eggs, sugar, butter, salt, and vanilla, set in a pastry-lined dish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Cocoa-nut Pudding

Why it works: Cocoa and vanilla work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 357 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Cocoa-nut Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Grate the cocoa-nut and save the milk if it's sweet.

  2. Boil 1 quart of milk and pour it over the grated cocoa-nut.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs with sugar and butter, then add salt, vanilla extract, and cocoa-nut milk.

  2. Mix everything together and pour into a pudding dish lined with pastry.

Bake

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until set.

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. Cocoa + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together357 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Cocoa + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together643 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving the pudding its structure.
Cocoa-nut
Adds coconut flavour and moisture to the pudding.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and keeps it tender.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and contributes to its browning.
Butter
Adds fat, giving the custard a richer texture.

The step that matters

Bake at 400°F (200°C) until set. Eggs set through gentle heat; if the oven is too hot or the pudding is baked too long, the custard can curdle, turn grainy, and become watery as it pulls apart.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Almondfits about as well
  2. Pecansfits about as well
  3. Cocoathe original
  4. Chestnutfits about as well

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