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Cocoa-Nut Caramels
One pint milk, butter size of an egg, one cocoa-nut grated fine (or dessicated cocoa-nut may be used), three pounds white sugar, two tea-spoons lemon, boil slowly until stiff (some then beat to a cream), pour into shallow pans, and when partly cold cut in squares. Miss Nettie Brewster, Madison.
This is a milk fudge in the older sense of "caramel" — a boiled sugar-and-milk candy cut in squares, not a chewy wrapped sweet. Everything depends on how far you boil it.
- The hinge: cook to temperature, not to guesswork"Boil slowly until stiff" is a doneness cue rather than a fixed temperature; on a thermometer it corresponds roughly to the soft- to firm-ball range, about 235-248F. Under-boiled it will not hold a cut square; boiled much beyond that it turns hard and crumbly.
- Butter the size of an eggAbout 2 ounces, or 4 tablespoons. Nineteenth-century books measured butter by comparison because it came in irregular lumps rather than marked sticks.
- "Two tea-spoons lemon"Lemon extract, not juice — flavoring bottles were simply called "lemon" and "vanilla" in this period. Add it off the heat at the end, since alcohol-based extract boils away.
- The coconutOne grated fresh coconut yields roughly 3 to 4 cups. If substituting desiccated, use unsweetened; modern sweetened flaked coconut adds sugar to a mixture already carrying three pounds of it.
- Pan and stirringMilk and sugar at this ratio scorch readily. Use a heavy pan at least three times the volume of the mixture, stir until the sugar dissolves, then stir only occasionally and scrape the bottom.
- "Some then beat to a cream"Beating forces small sugar crystals and gives an opaque, fudge-like texture; leaving it unbeaten gives a clearer, chewier candy. Beat only after it has cooled well below boiling — modern fudge practice is to wait until it drops to roughly 110-120F for a fine grain.
- CuttingScore into squares while the slab is still warm and pliable, then finish cutting when set. Fully cold, it fractures rather than cuts.
- YieldSomewhere over three pounds of candy; the number of squares depends entirely on how thickly the slab is poured. Keep airtight.
Coconut candies appear all through American confectionery sections of the 1880s because coconuts had become cheap and common: Caribbean schooner trade brought them into Gulf and Atlantic ports in quantity, and commercially desiccated coconut, which this recipe already treats as an ordinary alternative, is often said to have been a comparatively new convenience product. The word "caramel" was used loosely at the time for almost any boiled sugar candy cut into squares, including milk-based ones we would now call fudge; the specific chewy caramel of later usage had not yet monopolized the term. Like much of The Dixie Cook Book, the recipe carries a contributor's name and town, which was the standard way regional compilations of the period built authority.