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Cocoanut Caramels

Coconut caramels are made by boiling milk, butter, coconut, sugar, and lemon juice until stiff, then beating, pouring into pans, and cutting into squares.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cocoanut Caramels

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel

  1. In a large pot, combine milk, butter, grated coconut, sugar, and lemon juice.

  2. Boil the mixture slowly until it becomes stiff.

  3. Beat the mixture until it is creamy.

Set and cut

  1. Pour the mixture into shallow pans.

  2. When it is partly cool, mark off into squares.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Milk
Provides liquid and milk solids that brown and build a creamy, caramel-like body.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich texture and mouthfeel.
Granulated sugar
Forms the bulk of the candy and sets firm as the mixture cooks down and cools.
Cocoanut
Adds moisture, flavour and chewy body to the candy.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture slowly until it becomes stiff. Sugar concentrates as water evaporates, and the cooking point decides firmness once cooled. Boiling too fast or too briefly can scorch the milk sugars or leave the candy soft, so heat should be kept gentle and steady while it thickens.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, butter, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, butter, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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