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Dessert

Cocoa-nut Cream Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with milk, sugar, eggs, corn starch, butter, and grated coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Cocoa-nut Cream Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, beat together the sugar and eggs.

  2. Mix the corn starch with a little cold milk and add it to the egg mixture.

  3. Pour the mixture into a saucepan and heat over medium heat, stirring constantly to prevent burning and lumps.

  4. Once the milk comes to a boil, add the butter and grated cocoa-nut.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake until set, like a custard pudding.

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Milk + cocoatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together643 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Butter + cocoatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together548 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-undecalactone (coconut, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard and give the pudding its structure as they cook.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture so the pudding holds its shape and stays smooth.
Sweet milk
Provides the liquid base that the eggs and starch set into a custard.
Butter
Adds richness and a soft, tender mouthfeel to the pudding.
Grated cocoa-nut
Adds coconut flavor and moisture to the pudding.

The step that matters

Stirring while heating the custard. Eggs and starch can scorch on the bottom of the pan and form lumps if left unstirred. Constant stirring over medium heat keeps the mixture even and smooth before it goes into the oven.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Peanutfits about as well
  4. Cocoathe original

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