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Dessert

White Cocoanut Cookies

Cookies made with butter, sugar, shredded coconut, water, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

White Cocoanut Cookies

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the shredded coconut and water, mixing well.

  3. Gradually add flour until the dough is stiff enough to handle.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into cookies and place them on a baking sheet.

  2. Bake in a preheated 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. 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. Coconut + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,315 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 trap air, giving the cookies a light, tender crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cookies and, creamed with butter, helps lighten the texture.
Shredded coconut
Adds chewy texture and coconut flavour to the dough.
Flour
Provides structure, setting the dough so it holds its shape when baked.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until the dough is stiff enough to handle. Adding flour in small amounts lets you stop once the dough can be shaped. Too much flour makes the cookies dry and dense, while too little leaves them spreading and fragile.

Swap the coconut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, 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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