Skip to main content
Bread

Cocoanut Ginger Bread

A sweet bread made with treacle, butter, sugar, flour, ground rice, baking powder, salt, and grated coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rice and coconut 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 ↓

Cocoanut Ginger Bread

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 the batter

  1. Melt the treacle, butter, and sugar in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. Once melted, remove from heat and let cool.

  3. In a large bowl, combine the flour, ground rice, baking powder, and salt.

  4. Pour the cooled mixture into the dry ingredients and mix well.

  5. When the batter is completely cool, fold in the grated coconut.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a Yorkshire pudding tin.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until done, then cut into squares.

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. Rice + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,063 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Butter + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Treacle
Adds dark sweetness, moisture, and a rich molasses flavor to the bread.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Flour
Provides the main structure of the bread.
Ground rice
Gives a slightly crumbly, tender texture to the crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas to lift the batter as it bakes.
Grated coconut
Adds moisture, chew, and a toasty coconut flavor.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before combining. If the melted treacle, butter, and sugar are still hot when mixed with the baking powder, the leavening reacts too early and loses lift. Cooling the batter fully before folding in the coconut also keeps the coconut from softening and the mixture from becoming greasy.

Swap the coconut

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

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

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

CornbreadCornbread345 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipesMilk Bread RollsMilk Bread Rolls242 recipesPotato BreadPotato Bread124 recipes