Skip to main content
Dessert

Cocoa Nut Biscuits

A baked biscuit made with coconut, sugar, egg whites, ground rice, and a pinch of salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Coconut and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,063 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Cocoa Nut Biscuits

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

Make the mixture

  1. Whisk the egg whites to a stiff froth.

  2. In a clean bowl, mix the sugar, coconut, ground rice, and salt.

  3. Gently fold in the whipped egg whites.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the mixture into pyramids and place on a greased baking tin.

  2. Bake for about 10 minutes until they are a pale brown.

  3. Remove from the tin and cool on a sieve.

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. Coconut + ricetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,063 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Sugar + coconuttop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  4. Sugar + ricetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + ricetop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,350 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped to a stiff froth, they trap air and give the biscuits a light, airy structure.
Castor sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the biscuits brown lightly in the oven.
Desiccated coconut
Provides the main body, flavour and chewy texture of the biscuits.
Ground rice
Adds a fine, dry starch that helps the biscuits hold their shape and set.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Fold gently so the whipped egg whites keep their trapped air. Overmixing deflates the foam, which makes the biscuits dense and flat instead of light.

Swap the coconut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, rice. 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.

You might also like

Rice CakeRice Cake120 recipesRice CreamRice Cream43 recipesRice JellyRice Jelly42 recipesRice PuddingRice Pudding22 recipes