Cocoa-nut Candy
INGREDIENTS. -1 lb. of sugar, 1/2 pint of cold water, 6 oz. of grated cocoa-nut. AVERAGE COST, 6d. dissolve, boil it 5 minutes, then strain, put Put the sugar and water into a pipkin to in the cocoa-nut, put the pipkin again on the fire, and stir till the candy rises; then spread on sheets of writing-paper that have been warmed before the fire, and before the candy is quite cold, take it off the paper and cut it in small squares. Let it be thoroughly dry before it is put away.
COCOA, TO MAKE.
A simple boiled-sugar coconut candy: syrup taken to the point where it clouds and grains, stirred with grated coconut, then spread and cut. The whole thing hinges on reading the sugar correctly.
- The water quantity is incompleteThe original reads "pint of cold water" with the fraction missing. For 1 lb of sugar, a quarter to a half pint (roughly 5 to 10 fl oz) is the usual range for this style of candy; the exact figure here cannot be recovered from the text.
- PipkinA small earthenware or metal cooking pot with a handle, used directly over the fire. Any heavy-bottomed saucepan does the job; heavy is worth having, since sugar scorches easily once the water has boiled off.
- "Boil it 5 minutes" is not a reliable cueFive minutes over a Victorian fire is not five minutes on a modern burner. A thermometer is a safer guide: taking the syrup towards the soft-ball range, about 235-240F, before the coconut goes in is one workable reading, though the recipe cooks it further afterwards until it grains.
- "Till the candy rises"This is the graining point. After the coconut is added and the mixture returns to the boil, keep stirring until the syrup turns opaque, thickens and begins to pull away from the sides of the pan. Stop there — a moment longer and it sets crumbly in the pan rather than on the paper.
- Grated cocoa-nutThe original means fresh coconut, grated from the nut, which carries its own moisture. Unsweetened desiccated coconut is the closest dry substitute; sweetened flaked coconut will push the whole batch too sweet and slacken the set.
- Warmed writing-paperThe paper is ungreased and warmed at the fire, presumably so the candy did not chill and seize on contact. Parchment on a warmed baking sheet is the modern equivalent; there is no need to grease it.
- Cutting and dryingLift it from the paper and cut it into squares while still warm and pliable, as directed, then leave the pieces uncovered for several hours to dry through before storing. Sealed damp, coconut candy weeps and goes sticky within a day.
- YieldRoughly 1 1/4 lb of candy, depending on how far the syrup is boiled; the number of squares depends entirely on how thin it is spread and how small they are cut.
Coconut sweets travelled into British cookery from the sugar colonies, where grated coconut and cane syrup were both to hand; versions of this boiled candy appear across the Caribbean, India and Brazil under a dozen names, and English cookbooks absorbed it as a cheap, showy sweetmeat. The INGREDIENTS and AVERAGE COST format suggests one of the Beeton-style household editions, full of these penny confections, with the cost of sixpence quoted here for over a pound of finished candy. That the sugar is spread on writing-paper rather than a tin is a reminder of how recently the fitted-out kitchen arrived: paper served as a cheap non-stick surface.