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Dessert

Modern Cookery

A baked biscuit made with flour, ground rice, lemon rind, ginger, treacle, sugar, butter, and grated coconut.

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

Modern Cookery

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slack oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very slack oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, ground rice, lemon rind, ground ginger, treacle, sugar, and butter until smooth.

  2. Let the mixture cool completely.

  3. Once cool, add the grated coconut and blend thoroughly.

Bake

  1. Drop small heaps of the mixture onto a buttered baking sheet.

  2. Bake for 30 to 45 minutes until set.

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. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Ginger + coconuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,168 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Rice + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,196 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the biscuits together as they set.
Ground rice
Gives a crisp, slightly sandy texture to the biscuits.
Treacle
Adds sweetness, depth of flavour and moisture, and helps the biscuits brown.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and tenderness in the finished biscuit.
Sugar
Sweetens the biscuits and helps them brown and crisp during baking.
Grated coconut
Adds moisture, chew and a distinct toasted coconut flavour.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool completely before adding the coconut. Coconut added to a hot mixture can lose its fresh flavour and texture, and heat can cause the fat to separate, so the dough may bake unevenly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, rice, ginger, molasses, sugar, butter, coconut. 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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