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Dessert

Cocoanut Cream Pie

A custard pie with coconut milk filling topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the filling

  1. Heat the milk and coconut in a double boiler.

  2. Add the cornstarch paste and stir until thickened.

  3. Cook the mixture for an additional 30 minutes.

  4. Beat the egg yolks and mix in the sugar.

  5. Pour the cooked mixture over the yolks and stir well.

  6. Add the butter and lemon extract.

  7. Cool the mixture.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour the cooled filling into a pre-baked pie crust.

  2. Whisk the egg whites until stiff.

  3. Gradually add 2 tablespoons of sugar to the egg whites.

  4. Spread the meringue on top of the pie.

  5. Bake the pie in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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. Coconut + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  4. Coconut + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard and whites whip into the meringue topping for structure.
Cornstarch
Gelatinizes when heated with the milk, thickening the filling so it can be sliced.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, setting into a creamy filling.
Shredded coconut
Adds coconut flavor and body to the custard filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the egg whites hold a stable, glossy meringue.

The step that matters

Cooking the filling until thickened. Cornstarch only thickens fully when the mixture reaches a boil and is stirred, and it must be cooked long enough to lose its starchy taste. Undercooked starch leaves the filling thin or pasty, and the custard may then not set firmly after cooling.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Bananafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, coconut, 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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