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Dessert

Chess Cakes

A coconut cake made by boiling sugar and water, adding grated coconut, butter, and egg yolks, then baking.

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 ↓

Chess Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grate the coconut.

Make the filling

  1. Boil the sugar in water for 15 minutes.

  2. Stir in the grated coconut and boil for another 15 minutes.

  3. While warm, stir in the butter and beaten egg yolks.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in patty pans lined with rich pastry.

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. Coconut + sugartop 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

Coconut
Provides the main flavour and moisture, and body, to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and, when boiled, thickens it into a syrup that binds the coconut.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich the filling and help it set as it bakes.

The step that matters

Stirring in the butter and egg yolks while warm. Egg yolks thicken and can scramble if the mixture is too hot, so they should be stirred in gently and only while the filling is warm, not boiling, to keep it smooth.

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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