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Cocoanut Candy
Boil one pound granulated sugar, with one grated cocoanut and the milk of the nut, boil slowly until thick, pour it out on buttered plates.
A two-ingredient sugar candy that depends entirely on knowing when to stop boiling. The original gives no temperature, so a thermometer is the one piece of equipment worth adding.
- The hinge: cook to soft-ballThe hinge: judging the boil -- "Boil slowly until thick" gives no stage, but soft-ball, around 238-240F on a candy thermometer, is the usual target for a poured, cuttable coconut candy. Undercooked, it stays sticky and will not set on the plate; taken much further it sets progressively firmer and drier.
- "The milk of the nut"This is the thin water inside a whole coconut, not canned coconut milk. One nut yields roughly half a cup to a cup. Canned coconut milk is emulsified with fat and will behave differently in the boil.
- One grated cocoanutA medium coconut gives about 3 to 4 cups of grated meat, or roughly 10 oz. Unsweetened desiccated coconut is the nearest substitute at about 3 cups, but rehydrate it in the coconut water for ten minutes first, as dried flakes will drink up the syrup.
- Sugar quantityOne pound of granulated sugar is a little over two cups. If the coconut water falls short of half a cup, top up with plain water so the sugar dissolves cleanly before it comes to a boil.
- Stirring and crystallisationStir until the sugar dissolves, then stir only enough to keep the coconut from catching. Brushing the pan sides down with a wet pastry brush prevents stray crystals from seeding the whole batch grainy.
- Buttered platesAny cold flat surface serves: a buttered rimmed sheet pan or a marble slab. Spread to about half an inch and score into squares while still warm, since fully set coconut candy shatters unevenly under a knife.
- YieldAround a pound and a half of finished candy, since only the added water boils off; cut small, that is a few dozen squares. Best eaten within a few days to a week in a tin, after which the coconut dries out.
Coconut candy of this kind turns up throughout nineteenth-century American and British household books, and its spread tracks the shipping trade: whole coconuts reached northern ports from the Caribbean in growing quantities over the second half of the century, cheap enough that grated coconut became a common sweet and cake ingredient rather than a luxury. The spelling "cocoanut" was usual in English cookbooks for much of the century, generally explained as a confusion with cocoa or cacao, and it faded from print in the early 1900s. Recipes this bare, with no temperature and no timing, assumed a cook already familiar with judging boiled sugar by eye.