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Cocoanut Cones
2 lbs. lump sugar 1 cup water Cream of tartar 1/2 teaspoon almond extract Dromedary Cocoanut Dissolve sugar in water; add pinch of cream of tartar and boil without stirring until it snaps when tested in cold water. Stir into it enough cocoanut to make it thick, adding the extracts. Shape into neat cones and place on waxed paper to dry.
A hard-crack sugar syrup bound with shredded coconut — closer to a coconut brittle than to the soft macaroon-style cones sold today. The whole recipe turns on reading the syrup correctly.
- "Snaps when tested in cold water"This is the hard-crack stage, 300-310F on a candy thermometer: a drizzle of syrup dropped into cold water sets brittle and cracks rather than bending. At soft-ball or firm-ball the cones will slump and stay tacky instead of drying.
- Lump sugarLoaf or lump sugar was cut from a refined sugar cone or pressed into cubes; plain granulated cane sugar is the direct substitute. Two pounds is about 4 1/2 cups.
- The cream of tartarA scant 1/8 teaspoon is the "pinch" intended. It inverts a little of the sucrose as the syrup boils, which is what keeps the finished candy from turning grainy.
- How much coconutThe original gives no quantity. For this much syrup, count on roughly 4 to 5 cups of shredded or desiccated coconut, added a cup at a time until the mass just holds a shape. Dromedary sold shredded coconut, most likely unsweetened; sweetened bagged coconut will make an already very sweet candy sweeter.
- "The extracts," pluralOnly almond is listed, so a second flavouring appears to have dropped out of the text; vanilla is the obvious candidate, though nothing in the recipe says so. Add off the heat, standing back — alcohol in extract spits in hot syrup.
- Work fastHard-crack syrup stiffens within a minute or two of the coconut going in. Have the waxed paper laid out first, and shape the cones with lightly buttered or dampened hands as quickly as the heat allows; a bowl set over hot water buys a little extra time.
- Yield and keepingThe original gives no yield; two pounds of sugar plus the coconut makes a large batch, several dozen cones. They dry firm in an hour or two and keep a week in a tin, but humidity makes them weep — avoid making them on a damp day and do not refrigerate them.
Dromedary was the grocery brand of the Hills Brothers Company of New York, which built its business on imported dates and shredded coconut and issued small promotional recipe books to teach American cooks what to do with them. Packaged coconut became widely available in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, once mechanised shredding and drying made it possible to ship the meat inland, and confectionery was among the first uses it found: cones, macaroons, kisses and "snowballs" appear in recipe collections from the 1880s onward. The technique here belongs to the older tradition of home sugar-boiling, in which a cook judged temperature by dropping syrup into a cup of cold water and testing how it set; candy thermometers were not yet common household equipment.