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Dessert

Cocoanut Meringue

A baked dish of grated coconut, milk and egg yolks topped with a sugar meringue and browned in the oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Cocoanut Meringue

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 the base

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

  2. Mix the grated cocoanut with the milk, butter, lemon rind, and yolks of the eggs.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake for 15 minutes.

Make the meringue and finish

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Gradually add the sugar and lemon juice to the beaten whites.

  3. Spread the frosting over the baked mixture and brown in the oven.

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 + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Enrich the coconut base, adding richness and help it set when baked.
Egg whites
Whipped into stiff foam that forms the meringue topping, giving it lightness and structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the meringue and helps stabilise the beaten whites.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness to the coconut base.
Grated coconut
Provides the main flavour and body of the base.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff. Whites must be fully whipped before sugar is added, since a stable foam holds the meringue's shape and volume. Underbeaten or greasy whites will collapse and brown unevenly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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