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Date and Cocoanut Candy
3 cups sugar 1 cup milk 2 tablespoons sirup 1 package Dromedary Dates 1 cup Dromedary Cocoanut 1/4 cup butter 2 teaspoons almond extract Cook sugar, milk, sirup, butter and dates until the mixture forms a soft ball when tested in cold water. Remove from fire, add cocoanut and flavoring and pour into well greased pans. When cold enough to handle put in greased cloth and press into a loaf.
A dense date-and-coconut fudge, set as a loaf and sliced rather than cut in squares. It is a straightforward boiled sugar candy, and the only real variable is how far you take the syrup.
- Soft ball means 236-238FSoft ball means roughly 234-240F -- a thermometer is a useful check, but the recipe's own guide is the cold-water test. Undercook and the loaf will be too soft to slice cleanly; take it much past soft ball and it will set hard and dry.
- "Sirup" is corn syrup"Sirup" most likely means light corn syrup -- in an American booklet of this vintage that is the usual reading, Karo being the familiar brand, though the text does not specify. Its job is to interfere with crystal growth, so do not leave it out.
- A package of Dromedary datesCarton sizes varied, so reckon on somewhere around half a pound of pitted dates and adjust to taste. Chop them before they go in, or they will stay in lumps that scorch on the bottom of the pan.
- Dromedary CocoanutDried shredded coconut, not the moist sweetened flakes now standard. Unsweetened desiccated coconut is the closer match; sweetened flake will push an already very sweet candy further.
- Scorching is the riskMilk, butter and sugared fruit all catch. Use a heavy pan of at least three quarts, stir throughout, and expect the mixture to foam up well above its starting level.
- Go easy on the almond extractTwo teaspoons in a batch this size is assertive by modern taste; one is plenty unless you want the marzipan note forward.
- The cloth and the loafCool until it can be handled but is still warm and plastic, then wrap in a greased cloth (parchment works as well) and press firmly into a bar. Chill, then slice thin with a long knife.
- YieldAbout two pounds of candy, roughly 40 to 50 slices from a single loaf. It keeps a week or more wrapped at room temperature.
Dromedary was the brand name of the Hills Brothers Company of New York, a firm built on packaged dates and shredded coconut long before the name appeared on cake and pudding mixes. Booklets like this one existed to solve a merchandising problem: dates and coconut both sold in cartons that a household bought occasionally and then had to use up, so the publisher supplied a page of candies, breads and puddings that consumed a whole package at a time. The recipe itself is ordinary boiled fudge technique, which spread widely in American home kitchens once cheap refined sugar was available; the doneness here is judged by the cold-water test rather than by a thermometer, and the candy is pressed into a loaf under a greased cloth and sliced, a bar being easier to transport than cut squares.