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Cocoanut Pralines
1 cup Karo, Blue or Orange 2 cups confectioner's sugar Label 1/2 cup rich milk 1¾ cups desiccated cocoanut Combine the Karo, sugar and milk and boil rapidly to 238 degrees F. or until a little forms a soft ball when tried in cold water. Beat until it begins to cream, add the cocoanut and drop by good-sized teaspoonfuls onto pans sparingly oiled with Mazola.
A straightforward soft-ball candy, complicated only by brand names that no longer mean anything on a supermarket shelf. The whole recipe turns on catching the syrup at the right stage and beating it just far enough.
- Karo, Blue or Orange LabelColour-coded labels once distinguished Karo's grades, the lighter ones mild and pale, the darker ones more caramelised in flavour. Either light or dark corn syrup will work here; light gives a whiter praline.
- MazolaCorn oil, made by the same firm that made Karo. Any neutral oil does the job, and a sheet of parchment is easier still.
- Rich milkWhole milk, or whole milk with a spoonful or two of cream stirred in. Skim milk gives a thinner, more brittle candy.
- Desiccated cocoanutDried unsweetened shredded coconut, quite fine and dry. Modern sweetened flaked coconut is moist and much sweeter; if that is all you have, expect a softer, cloying result and reduce nothing else, since the sugar ratio is already at its limit.
- 238 degrees FSoft-ball stage; a thermometer is easier to read than the cold-water test. Overcooking makes the pralines dry and crumbly, undercooking leaves them too soft to hold their shape.
- Beat until it begins to creamThis is the hinge. Let the syrup cool undisturbed for a couple of minutes off the heat, then beat until it loses its gloss and just starts to thicken and turn opaque. Stop there — carry on and it seizes in the pan before you can drop it.
- Working fastThe mixture stiffens quickly once the coconut goes in. Have the pans oiled and two spoons ready before you start beating.
- HumiditySugar candies of this kind refuse to set properly on a damp day. Choose dry weather, and store the finished pralines airtight.
- YieldThe recipe gives none; expect several dozen, depending on the size of the spoonful. Store airtight.
This comes from one of the promotional cookbooks issued by American corn-refining interests in the early twentieth century, and the giveaway is in the ingredient list: Karo corn syrup and Mazola corn oil were products of the same company, and a booklet like this existed to put both into the hands of home cooks. The praline itself is older and travelled a long way to get here — the name is French, generally traced to a seventeenth-century confection of almonds cooked in sugar, and the form Americans know best developed in New Orleans, where pecans and cane sugar were plentiful and the candy became a street trade. Substituting coconut for the nut, and corn syrup for part of the sugar, is characteristic of the period: desiccated coconut had become a cheap, shelf-stable pantry staple, and corn syrup was being promoted hard as the modern cook's insurance against grainy candy, since it interferes with sugar crystallisation.