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Dessert

Cocoa-nut Cheese-cakes

A coconut-based cheese cake made with grated coconut, sugar, eggs, lemon rind, baked in pastry-lined pans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Coconut and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,233 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Cocoa-nut Cheese-cakes

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 the coconut

  1. Carefully break the coconut shell and drain the liquid.

  2. Remove the kernel, peel off the dark skin, and grate the nut.

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, combine the grated nut, sugar, and water or coconut milk.

  2. Stir gently over low heat for about 1 hour until tender.

  3. Let the mixture cool slightly.

  4. Mix in the whisked eggs and grated lemon rind.

Bake

  1. Line patty pans with pastry.

  2. Fill the pans with the mixture.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 13 to 15 minutes.

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 + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

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

  5. Coconut + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set when baked.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it turn tender and golden as it cooks.
Grated coconut
Provides the main body, flavour and moisture of the filling.

The step that matters

Stir gently over low heat for about 1 hour. Low, gentle heat softens the grated coconut slowly and keeps the sugar from scorching, so the mixture becomes tender rather than dry or burnt.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Coconutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, lemon. 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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