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Cocoa-nut Cream

A custard-like cream made with water, cinnamon, vanilla, cocoa-nut pieces, egg yolks, crystallized fruits, and citrons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,287 recipes. Both carry 4-methoxybenzaldehyde, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

Cocoa-nut Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. Combine water, cinnamon, vanilla, and pieces of cocoa-nut in a saucepan.

  2. Boil for 3 hours.

  3. Remove the saucepan from the heat.

  4. Beat the egg yolks and gradually add them to the mixture, stirring well.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a glass dish and let it cool.

  2. Garnish with slices of small crystallized citrons.

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. Cinnamon + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  2. Vanilla + cocoatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together357 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Cinnamon + cocoatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together74 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Vanilla + eggtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Cinnamon + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Vanilla and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 27,347 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

Cocoa-nut pieces
Provide the main coconut flavor and body as they simmer in the water.
Egg yolks
Thicken the mixture into a custard-like cream as they set on cooling.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Yolks thicken when heated gently but can scramble if added to a very hot mixture. Stirring well while adding them gradually helps them blend smoothly and set evenly.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, vanilla, 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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