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Dessert

Cocoanut Rice Trifle

A sweet coconut rice trifle made with cooked rice, milk, coconut, sugar, vanilla, and optional fruit sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Coconut and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,294 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Cocoanut Rice Trifle

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Wash the rice thoroughly.

  2. Cook the rice in rapidly boiling salted water for 10 minutes.

  3. Strain the rice.

  4. Return the strained rice to a double boiler.

  5. Add 2 cups of milk and ¼ teaspoon of salt.

  6. Boil the mixture until soft.

  7. Beat the mixture until smooth.

Add the coconut and finish

  1. Soak 1 cup of shredded coconut in ½ cup of milk and ½ cup of sugar for 2 hours.

  2. Add the soaked coconut to the rice mixture.

  3. Cook the mixture for an additional 30 minutes.

  4. Stir in 1 teaspoon of vanilla.

  5. Serve cold with any fruit sauce or crushed fruit.

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 + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,294 recipes

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

  2. Rice + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,063 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  4. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

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

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

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

Rice
Starch that softens and thickens into the creamy body of the pudding as it cooks.
Milk
Liquid that cooks with the rice to create the creamy, custard-like texture.
Shredded coconut
Adds coconut flavour and chewy texture, and soaking softens it into the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and helps flavour the soaked coconut.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture until smooth. Rice grains that are not broken down stay gritty. Beating the soft, cooked rice while hot breaks up the grains, giving the smooth texture the trifle depends on.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Coconutthe original
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Blueberryfits less well
  4. Peachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, sugar, 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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