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Cocoanut Ice

A baked coconut dessert made with grated coconut, egg white, sugar, and rose water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Cocoanut Ice

Why it works: Coconut and rose work together. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 185 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Cocoanut Ice

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, combine the grated coconut, beaten egg white, sifted sugar, and rose water.

  3. Shape the mixture into sugar‑loaf shapes.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the shapes in the oven for a few minutes until crisp and white outside, but soft and melting in the center.

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 + rosetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together185 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + rosetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,584 recipes

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

  5. Egg + rosetop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,840 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Coconut
Supplies the bulk, moisture and chewy texture of the shapes.
Egg white
Whipped foam binds the coconut and sets into a crisp, white outer layer.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the outside brown and crisp in the oven.

The step that matters

Baking the shapes. Sugar browns quickly and the coconut dries out, so the shapes can scorch or turn hard. Pull them once the outside is crisp and white while the center stays soft, since the interior keeps setting as it cools.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Coconutthe original

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