Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Cocoanut 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.
Prepare
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Make the dough
In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.
Add the eggs and mix well.
Dissolve the baking soda in the milk and add to the mixture.
Stir in the grated coconut.
Gradually add flour until the dough is manageable.
Shape and bake
Roll out the dough and cut into desired shapes.
Place on a baking sheet and bake until golden brown. (About 10-12 minutes)
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.
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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,648 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,467 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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
- Sugar
- Sweetens the dough and, creamed with butter, helps give the cookies a tender texture.
- Butter
- Adds fat and richness, and creaming it with sugar traps air for a lighter crumb.
- Eggs
- Bind the dough and add structure and richness to the cookies.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the dissolved liquid to produce gas that helps the cookies rise and spread.
- Grated coconut
- Adds moisture, fat and coconut flavor, and browns during baking.
- Flour
- Provides the structure that holds the dough together for rolling and cutting.
The step that matters
Gradually add flour until the dough is manageable. Adding too much flour makes the dough dry and tough, while too little leaves it sticky and hard to roll. Adding it gradually lets you stop once the dough holds together.
Swap the coconut
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, egg, milk, flour):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Figfits about as well
- Coconutthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, milk, 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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