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Dessert

Cocoanut Cream Pie

A chilled coconut custard filling baked in a pie crust and topped with meringue.

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 Cream Pie

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.

Make the filling

  1. Scald the milk over steam.

  2. Add sugar, coconut, and butter to the milk.

  3. Mix flour and salt with a little cold milk, then add to the mixture.

  4. Gently stir in the beaten egg whites.

Bake the crust

  1. Bake the pie crust after pricking it with a fork at 400°F (200°C).

Assemble and brown

  1. Once both the filling and crust are cold, spread the mixture over the crust.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add 8 tablespoons of powdered sugar.

  3. Spread the meringue over the top and sprinkle with ¼ cup of coconut.

  4. Brown lightly 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 + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

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

  3. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so the filling sets into a sliceable custard.
Egg whites
Add structure and lightness to the filling and form the airy meringue topping.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilize the meringue.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the filling.
Coconut
Adds coconut flavor and chewy texture to the filling and topping.

The step that matters

Cooling the filling and crust before spreading. Spreading warm filling over the crust can soften the pastry and let the custard loosen. Letting both cool first helps the filling set and keeps the crust crisp under the meringue.

Swap the coconut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, butter, flour, 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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