Skip to main content
Dessert

Coconut Butter

A homemade butter made from grated coconut, hot water, and salt, churned until solid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Coconut Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the coconut

  1. Peel the coconut and grate it into a bowl.

  2. Pour hot water over the grated coconut and let it sit for about 1 hour.

  3. Strain the mixture through coarse muslin, squeezing out all the liquid.

Separate the oil

  1. Let the liquid sit in a bowl overnight or for a few hours until the oil rises to the top.

  2. Skim the oil off and place it in a churn or wide-mouthed jar.

Churn and shape

  1. Add 1 teaspoon of salt for each coconut used.

  2. Chill the jar in an ice chest until thoroughly cold.

  3. Shake the jar to churn the mixture until the butter forms, about 10 minutes.

  4. Turn the butter out into a cloth, mold it to shape, and keep it in the ice chest.

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

What each ingredient does

Coconut
Supplies the oil that solidifies into the butter once separated and chilled.
Hot water
Loosens the coconut's oil from the grated flesh so it can be extracted.

The step that matters

Chill the jar until thoroughly cold before churning. Coconut oil must be cold enough to solidify; if it is still warm or soft, shaking will not form butter and the mixture stays liquid or greasy.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes