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Cocoanut Bal's
Wet two pounds of sugar with the milk of a cocoanut. Boil and stir till it begins to granulate. Then stir in the cocoanut grated fine. Boil a short time longer, then pour into buttered dishes, and as soon as it can be handled make into balls.--Mrs. J. M.
A two-ingredient sugar candy that depends entirely on reading the syrup correctly. The whole recipe turns on the phrase "begins to granulate," which is the point where a stirred sugar syrup starts throwing crystals and turns opaque.
- "Milk of a cocoanut" is not canned coconut milkIt means the thin, sweet water inside a fresh nut, roughly 1/2 to 3/4 cup from an average coconut. Canned coconut milk is a modern emulsion of pressed flesh and will behave differently, adding fat that interferes with crystallisation.
- Two pounds of sugarAbout 4 1/2 cups granulated. The coconut water alone barely wets it; add water until the sugar has the texture of damp sand, around a cup of liquid in total, or the bottom will scorch before the top dissolves.
- The temperature the recipe will not tell youThe book gives no thermometer reading at all. "Begins to granulate" is a visual cue, the point at which a stirred syrup starts throwing crystals and clouds; in practice that tends to fall somewhere near the soft-ball range, roughly 235-240F. Below that the balls will not hold; much above it they turn hard and sandy. Stirring throughout is deliberate here, since agitation is what produces the fine crystalline, fudge-like grain.
- The coconutOne nut grated fine gives roughly 3 to 4 cups. Unsweetened desiccated or frozen grated coconut works, roughly 8 to 12 ounces depending on which you use, but sweetened flaked coconut will push the finished candy past palatable.
- "Buttered dishes"Shallow pans or platters, buttered so the mass can be lifted and worked. The point is to spread the candy thin enough to cool quickly and evenly, not to set it as a slab.
- Timing the rolling"As soon as it can be handled" is a narrow window, perhaps two or three minutes. Too hot and it burns the hands and slumps; too cool and it crumbles rather than binding. Buttered hands help.
- YieldExpect around 40 to 50 balls of walnut size. They keep about a week in a tin between layers of waxed paper and dry out after that.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1879, is a collection of contributed receipts, which is why so many entries end with a set of initials rather than a name: Mrs. J. M. sent this one in. Coconuts reached Southern kitchens through the West Indies trade, arriving whole in port cities, and before commercially prepared desiccated coconut became common in American kitchens toward the end of the nineteenth century every coconut dish began with cracking, draining and grating the nut by hand. Sugar candies of this type, boiled and stirred until grainy, belong to the same family as the pralines and fudges of the period, all of which relied on the cook's eye and hand rather than a thermometer.