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Dessert

Cocoanut Cookies

A sweet cookie made with sugar, butter, eggs, baking soda, sour cream, coconut, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cocoanut Cookies

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Roll the sugar.

  2. Sift the sugar.

  3. Cream the butter.

  4. Add the sifted sugar.

  5. Beat the eggs until light.

  6. Add the eggs to the mixture.

  7. Dissolve the baking soda in the sour cream.

  8. Add the sour cream to the mixture.

  9. Stir in the grated coconut.

  10. Mix in enough flour to form a dough that can be rolled out, but not too stiff.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough thinly.

  2. Sprinkle the dough with sugar.

  3. Bake until golden brown.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and give the cookies a tender, rich texture.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure as they set in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream to release gas, helping the cookies rise and brown.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and acidity, which activates the baking soda and tenderizes the dough.
Grated coconut
Adds flavor and a chewy texture to the cookies.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the surface brown during baking.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in the sour cream. Baking soda needs an acid to react and produce gas. Dissolving it fully in the sour cream first spreads it evenly, so the cookies rise and brown uniformly rather than in patches.

Swap the coconut

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

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

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