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Cocoa-nut Cream

A sweet cream dessert made from cocoa-nut pieces simmered in a sugar syrup and thickened with egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cocoa-nut Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the coconut

  1. Remove the milk from the cocoa-nut and cut it into small pieces, discarding the shell and skin.

Make the cream

  1. Make a thin syrup by dissolving sugar in water.

  2. Add the cocoa-nut pieces to the syrup and boil for 3 hours.

  3. If desired, add cinnamon, vanilla, or lemon for flavor.

  4. Remove the saucepan from the heat.

  5. Beat the egg yolks and gradually stir them into the mixture.

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

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish with slices of 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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cocoa + cinnamontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together74 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Syrup + cinnamontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together990 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Provides the coconut milk and flesh that give the cream its body and flavor.
Egg yolks
Thicken the mixture as they set gently with heat, giving the cream a custard-like texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the thin syrup in which the coconut is simmered.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can scramble if added to a very hot mixture. Removing the saucepan from the heat first and stirring in the yolks gradually helps keep the cream smooth.

“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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