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Dessert

Cocoanut Pudding Souffle

A sweet coconut pudding folded with beaten egg whites and baked into a light souffle.

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 Pudding Souffle

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 custard base

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Mix the corn starch and sugar together in a bowl.

  3. Gradually add the dry mixture to the boiling milk, stirring rapidly.

  4. Once thickened, remove from heat and stir in the butter and coconut.

  5. Let the mixture cool but not set firm.

Fold and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites to a firm froth.

  2. Fold the egg whites into the cooled pudding mixture along with the flavoring.

  3. Pour into cups, shells, or a round mold and bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 10 minutes.

  4. Dust with powdered sugar before serving.

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. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  4. Rose + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,174 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Beaten into a foam that traps air, lifting the soufflé as it bakes and sets.
Corn starch
Thickens the boiled milk into a pudding that holds the whipped whites.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch thickens into the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and helps stabilise the foam.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the pudding base.
Grated or desiccated cocoanut
Adds coconut flavour and texture to the pudding base.

The step that matters

Folding the egg whites into the cooled pudding. Egg whites hold air only while whole. Overmixing or deflating them, or folding into a base that is still hot, loses the foam and the soufflé rises poorly. Fold gently and bake promptly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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