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Dessert

Cocoanut Jumbles

A sweet baked treat made with sugar, butter, flour, eggs, grated coconut, and sprinkled with granulated sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and coconut are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,467 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cocoanut Jumbles

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.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Beat the eggs thoroughly.

  3. Rub the butter and sugar together until creamy.

  4. Add the grated coconut, then mix in the flour.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough lightly.

  2. Sprinkle the surface with granulated sugar.

  3. Cut into shapes using a jumble-cutter.

  4. Bake on tin sheets 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. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + coconuttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,315 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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to give the jumbles a rich, tender texture.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cut shapes together.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps it brown during baking.
Grated coconut
Adds moisture, flavour and a chewy texture to the dough.

The step that matters

Bake on tin sheets until golden. Baking only until golden keeps the jumbles tender and lightly crisp. Overbaking dries the dough and makes it brittle, while underbaking leaves it doughy in the centre.

Swap the coconut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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