Why it works: Butter and milk 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 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.
Prepare
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a bowl, mix the flour and cream of tartar.
In another bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.
Make the dough
Add the eggs and thick milk or cream to the sugar mixture and mix well.
Combine the wet and dry ingredients, then add the baking soda and shredded coconut.
Add flavoring to taste and mix until well combined.
Bake
Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto a baking sheet.
Bake for 12-15 minutes or until golden.
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.
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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
-
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
-
Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,648 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
-
Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,467 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Flour
- Provides the main structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
- Butter
- Adds fat for tenderness and rich flavor in the cookie dough.
- Eggs
- Bind the dough and add structure and richness to the cookies.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the dough and helps the cookies brown as they bake.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to lift the cookies as they bake.
- Shredded coconut
- Adds chewy texture and toasty flavor to the cookies.
Swap the coconut
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, cream, sugar, butter, egg, milk):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Coconutthe original
- Figfits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, cream, sugar, butter, egg, milk. 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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