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Cocoanut Bread Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with shredded coconut, milk, cornstarch, butter, eggs, nutmeg, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Soak the shredded coconut in 2 cups of milk.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Once boiling, add 1 tablespoon of cornstarch mixed with a little cold milk or 1 crushed cracker.

  4. Stir in 1 tablespoon of butter, ¼ teaspoon of salt, and 3 beaten eggs.

  5. Add nutmeg and sugar to taste.

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. Coconut + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together411 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-pinene (pine, resin).

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

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

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

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

  5. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Shredded coconut
Adds coconut flavor and body to the milk base.
Eggs
Set the mixture into a custard as they cook with the warm milk.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk so the custard holds together when boiled.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs and starch set into custard.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten eggs. Eggs thicken only when heated gently; if the mixture is too hot when they go in, they can scramble into lumps instead of forming a smooth custard.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Turmericfits less well

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

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