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Dessert

Cocoanut Cream Pie

A pie with a coconut and egg white custard filling baked in a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 Cream Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grate the coconut and set aside.

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  3. Add the sugar gradually while continuing to beat.

Bake

  1. Mix in the grated coconut, coconut milk, heavy cream, butter, and cornstarch until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake 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.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Coconut + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they give the filling airy structure and help it set.
Coconut milk
Adds coconut flavour and richness, along with moisture in the filling.
Heavy cream
Adds fat, making the filling richer and smoother in texture.
Cornstarch
Thickens the filling as it heats, helping it hold its shape when set.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilise the whipped egg whites.

The step that matters

Add the sugar gradually while beating the egg whites. Adding sugar slowly lets the whites build a stable foam. Dumping it in at once can collapse the foam and leave the filling dense and weepy after baking.

Swap the coconut

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

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

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