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Dessert

Cocoanut Tartlets

A baked tartlet with coconut, almonds, and egg, lined with almond pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Coconut and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,093 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

Cocoanut Tartlets

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Line patty tins with a little almond pastry.

Make the filling

  1. Cream the egg yolk until thick.

  2. Gently fold in the stiffly whipped egg white, coconut, and ground almonds.

  3. Spoon the mixture into the lined patty tins.

Bake

  1. Bake until set and lightly golden.

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 + almondtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  2. Egg + almondtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Egg + coconuttop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Ground almonds
Provides the bulk and nutty flavour of the filling, giving it a dense, tender texture.
Egg
Sets the filling when baked and binds the coconut and almonds together.
Unsweetened coconut
Adds texture and a coconut flavour without extra sweetness.

The step that matters

Fold in the stiffly whipped egg white. Folding gently keeps the air in the whipped white, which helps the filling rise lightly and stay tender. Overmixing deflates the foam and leaves the tartlets dense.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Coconutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, almond. 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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