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Dessert

Cocoa-nut Cheese-cakes

A baked dessert made with milk, ground rice, butter, sugar, currants, eggs, grated cocoa-nut, lemon zest, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. 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.

Make the filling

  1. Combine new milk, ground rice, and butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir gently over low heat until tender.

  3. Once cooled, add grated cocoa-nut, whisked eggs, and lemon zest. Mix well.

Bake

  1. Line pattypans with fine pastry.

  2. Pour the mixture into the lined pans.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 13 to 15 minutes or until set.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Milk + cocoatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together643 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

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

  5. Rice + cocoatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together93 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Ground rice
Thickens the milk mixture and gives the filling a soft, tender body.
Eggs
Set when baked, binding the filling and giving it structure.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth texture to the filling.
New milk
Forms the liquid base that the ground rice thickens and the eggs set into.
Grated cocoa-nut
Adds flavour and a chewy, moist texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Baking only until the filling is set keeps it tender; overbaking dries out the egg-thickened custard and makes it firm and rubbery.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, rice, butter, sugar, egg, cocoa, 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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