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Cocoa-Nut Candy
Put one pound of the best loaf sugar, broken into lumps, into a saucepan, and pour over it half a pint of spring water. Let it stand for a quarter of an hour, then place it on the fire and allow it to boil for five or six minutes. Remove the scum and boil the sugar until it is thick and white, then stir into it a quarter of a pound of the white of a fresh cocoa-nut finely grated. Stir it unceasingly until it rises in a mass in the pan, then spread it as quickly as possible upon sheets of paper which have been dried before the fire. Remove the paper before the candy is quite cold. Let it dry, then store it in tin boxes. The grated cocoa-nut should be spread out and allowed to dry for two or three days before it is used for candy.
A grained-sugar coconut candy of the old confectioner's school, where the whole trick lies in reading the sugar by eye. A thermometer removes the guesswork the original expects you to supply.
- The hinge: boil to soft ball, then grain it deliberatelyThe hinge: boil the syrup well past thread, then grain it deliberately -- "thick and white" is the recipe's own cue, roughly the soft-ball range, about 238-240F, though the book gives no stage name or temperature. Continued unceasing stirring forces the sugar to crystallise, which is exactly what "rises in a mass in the pan" means -- stop stirring too soon and you get sticky paste, too late and it seizes in the pan before it can be spread.
- Loaf sugarLoaf or lump sugar was refined cane sugar sold in cones or blocks, broken up as needed. Ordinary granulated white sugar is the direct equivalent, one pound, no adjustment.
- Half a pint of waterAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, about 1 1/4 US cups. "Spring water" most likely signals a preference for clean, soft water over a suspect town supply; filtered or bottled still water serves the same purpose. The soak simply dissolves the lumps before heat is applied.
- Removing the scumImpurities in less-refined sugar rose as grey foam, and any left behind seeded premature crystals. Modern sugar throws off almost none; skim if anything appears, otherwise leave the pan alone and wash sugar crystals off the sides with a wet brush.
- Drying the coconutThe two- or three-day drying is not fussiness. Fresh grated coconut is wet enough to drop the syrup temperature and slacken the set. Desiccated unsweetened coconut, four ounces, is the ready-made substitute; sweetened flaked coconut is too moist and too sweet.
- Sheets of dried paperWarmed paper stopped the candy sticking and cracking. Parchment on a baking sheet does the job, and the instruction to lift the paper away before the candy is fully cold still holds -- once cold it bonds.
- Yield and storageAbout 1 1/4 lb of candy, enough for roughly 30 small pieces. Score it into squares while still warm. Airtight tins remain the right answer; grained sugar candy goes soft in humid air within a day or two of exposure.
"Cocoa-nut" was the standard British spelling well into the twentieth century, reflecting a persistent muddle with cacao. Whole coconuts are said to have reached Victorian Britain in quantity by steamship from Ceylon and the West Indies, cheap enough that grated coconut seems to have moved from an exotic garnish into everyday sweetshop and household use -- coconut ice, macaroons and this sort of grained candy probably belong to the same moment. The recipe is really a lesson in sugar boiling: the reader is being taught to recognise the stages of a syrup by look and behaviour, at a time when domestic thermometers were rare and a cook's judgement of the pan was the whole of the craft.