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Dessert

Cocoa-nut Cookies

A simple cookie made with butter, sugar, grated coconut, eggs, flour, and baking soda.

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 ↓

Cocoa-nut 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 and mix

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

  3. Add the grated coconut and eggs, mixing well.

  4. Stir in enough flour to form a stiff batter.

  5. Add the baking soda and mix until combined.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter onto buttered parchment paper on baking sheets.

  2. 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 + 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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Coconut + flourtop 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 add richness and a tender crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cookies and helps them brown during baking.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure as the cookies set.
Flour
Provides the structure that turns the mixture into a stiff batter.
Baking soda
Reacts to lift the cookies and promote spreading and browning.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. The record gives no time, so the cook must judge doneness by colour. Baking soda and sugar brown quickly, so pulling the cookies once golden keeps them from over-darkening or drying out.

Swap the coconut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, 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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