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Dessert

Chess Cakes

A coconut cake made with grated coconut, sugar, water, butter, egg yolks, baked in a pastry base.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Coconut and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,467 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Chess Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Boil sugar in water for 15 minutes.

  2. Stir in grated coconut and boil for another 15 minutes.

  3. While warm, stir in butter and beaten egg yolks.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill patty pans with rich pastry and pour in the mixture.

  2. Bake until golden.

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. Coconut + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Coconut + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Coconut
Provides the main bulk and chewy texture of the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and, boiled with water, forms a syrup that binds the coconut.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender filling.
Egg yolks
Thicken and set the filling as it bakes, adding richness and structure.

The step that matters

Stir in the butter and egg yolks while the mixture is warm. Egg yolks thicken and set gently at moderate heat but can scramble or curdle if added to a boiling mixture. Stirring them in while the mixture is only warm keeps the filling smooth before it goes into the pastry and bakes.

Swap the coconut

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

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

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