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Cocoanut Ice

A sweet coconut dessert made by boiling milk, sugar, and coconut, then layering with colored mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Cocoanut Ice

Why it works: Coconut and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,648 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cocoanut Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Boil the milk and sugar together for 1 hour, stirring constantly.

  2. Stir in the coconut and boil for an additional 10 minutes.

Layer and set

  1. Pour half of the mixture into a buttered tin.

  2. Color the remaining mixture with cochineal and pour it over the white layer.

  3. For best results, do not use the ice on the same day it is made.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + coconuttop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,742 recipes

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Loaf sugar
Sweetens the mixture and, as it boils and cools, forms the firm, crystalline body of the ice.
Desiccated coconut
Provides the bulk, flavor and fine texture of the set confection.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that dissolves the sugar and carries it into a boiled syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the milk and sugar with constant stirring. Stirring keeps the sugar from scorching on the base of the pan. Boiling long enough lets water evaporate, concentrating the sugar so the mixture sets firm rather than soft when it cools.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Coconutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk. 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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