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Dessert

Cocoa-nut Cheese Cakes

A coconut-based cheese cake made with grated coconut, sugar, water, egg yolks, and orange-flower water, 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: Cocoa and orange work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cocoa-nut Cheese Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove the rind from the cocoa-nut, wash, dry, and grate it.

  2. Dissolve the sugar in water in a saucepan and add the grated cocoa-nut.

  3. Stir the mixture until it boils, then let it cool slightly.

  4. Add the beaten egg yolks and orange-flower water, mixing thoroughly.

Fill and bake

  1. Line patty pans with pastry and pour the mixture in.

  2. Sift grated sugar over the top before baking.

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. Cocoa + orangetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together53 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  4. Cocoa + sugartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together956 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Cocoa + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together582 recipes

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

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Cocoa-nut
Forms the bulk of the filling and gives it its coconut flavour and body.
Egg yolks
Bind the filling and help it set as it bakes.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps form a syrup with the water.

The step that matters

Letting the mixture cool before adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks scramble when added to a very hot mixture, which leaves specks of cooked egg and a grainy texture. Cooling slightly first lets them blend smoothly and set evenly.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Cocoathe original

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