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Dessert

Cocoanut Biscuits

A sweet biscuit made from shredded coconut, sugar, and egg whites, baked until pale cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cocoanut Biscuits

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the paste

  1. Pound the coconut and sugar together in a mortar.

  2. Whip the egg whites to a stiff froth.

  3. Gradually add the whipped egg whites to the coconut and sugar mixture until it forms a smooth, thick paste.

  4. Beat the mixture with a wooden spoon.

Shape and bake

  1. Drop small portions of the paste onto thin paper.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until pale cream in color.

  3. Cut away all the paper except what is under each biscuit.

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. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Scraped cocoanut
Provides the bulk, chewy texture and coconut flavor of the biscuits.
White sugar
Sweetens the biscuits and helps bind the coconut into a paste.
Egg whites
Whipped to a foam, they lighten the paste and help hold the biscuits together.

The step that matters

Baking until pale cream. A slow oven lets the biscuits set and dry without browning too fast. Sugar and coconut darken quickly at high heat, so removing them at pale cream keeps them light and prevents bitterness.

“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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