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Dessert

Cocoanut Custard Pie

A custard pie made with milk, sugar, shredded coconut, egg yolks, and corn starch, topped with optional meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Coconut and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 306 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Cocoanut Custard Pie

makes two pies

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, combine milk, sugar, shredded coconut, and a pinch of salt.

  2. In a bowl, whisk together egg yolks and corn starch until smooth.

  3. Gradually add the milk mixture to the egg yolks, stirring constantly.

  4. Cook over medium heat, stirring until thickened.

Assemble and top

  1. Pour the mixture into pie crusts to make two pies.

  2. Use the egg whites to make a meringue topping, if desired.

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 + corntop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together306 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

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

  3. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness as they set with heat.
Corn starch
Thickens the custard so it sets smoothly when cooked.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the coconut flavor.
Shredded coconut
Adds coconut flavor and chewy texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Cook the filling until thickened. Stirring constantly over medium heat keeps the egg yolks and starch from scorching or lumping. The filling must reach a full thickened state, since the starch and yolk proteins set only once heated, and an undercooked custard stays runny when cut.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutthe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Peachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, egg, corn. 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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