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Dessert

Cheese Cakes

A coconut-based cake made with grated coconut, sugar, water, butter, egg yolks, and pastry-lined pans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Cheese Cakes

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 ↓

Cheese Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Peel and grate the coconut.

  2. Boil the sugar in water for 15 minutes.

  3. Stir in the grated coconut and boil for another 15 minutes.

Finish and bake

  1. While warm, stir in the butter and add the beaten egg yolks.

  2. Fill patty pans lined with rich pastry and bake.

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. 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

Egg yolks
Bind the filling and help it set and turn rich when baked.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, softening the filling's texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps form a syrup with the water.
Grated coconut
Provides the main flavour and a moist, chewy texture in the filling.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks while the mixture is warm. If the filling is too hot when the beaten yolks go in, they can scramble, leaving lumps. Stirring them in while it is only warm lets them blend smoothly and thicken gently as the filling 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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