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English Cheesecakes

A sweet coconut cheesecake made by boiling sugar, water, coconut, butter, and egg yolks, then baking in pastry-lined pans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Coconut and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,467 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

English Cheesecakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Boil sugar and water for 20 minutes.

  2. Stir in coconut and boil for 12 more minutes.

  3. While warm, stir in butter.

  4. Add beaten egg yolks and mix well.

Bake

  1. Line patty pans with pastry, fill with the mixture, and bake.

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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Provides sweetness and, once boiled, a thick syrup that binds the filling.
Shredded coconut
Adds chewy texture and bulk to the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a soft, tender body.
Egg yolks
Thicken the filling as they set and add richness and colour.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten egg yolks. Stirring the yolks into a hot mixture can scramble them into lumps. Letting the mixture cool slightly while warm, but not hot, before adding them helps keep the filling smooth and evenly set during baking.

Swap the coconut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, 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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