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Dessert

Cocoa-nut Cookies

A simple cookie made with butter, sugar, cocoa-nut, 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 flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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

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

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

Make the dough

  1. Add the grated cocoa-nut and eggs, mixing well.

  2. Gradually add flour until a stiff batter forms.

  3. Stir in the baking soda.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter onto buttered paper in pans.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Butter + cocoatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together548 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-undecalactone (coconut, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 rich, tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cookies and, creamed with butter, helps lighten the batter.
Grated cocoa-nut
Adds coconut flavor and moisture to the batter.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the cookies as they bake.
Flour
Provides structure, stiffening the batter so it holds its shape when dropped.
Baking soda
Reacts to lift the cookies and promote spreading and browning.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until a stiff batter forms. Adding flour gradually lets you judge stiffness; too much flour makes dry, dense cookies, while too little leaves them spreading thin.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Macadamia nutfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Cocoathe 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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