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Dessert

Cocoanut Taffy

A chewy candy made from sugar, cream of tartar, and grated cocoa nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Cocoanut Taffy

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the syrup

  1. Cook sugar and cream of tartar (or glucose) until it reaches the hard crack stage.

  2. Add grated cocoa nuts and stir until the mixture reaches the soft crack stage.

  3. Pour out the mixture immediately.

Pull and finish

  1. When cool enough, pull the taffy on a hook until it turns white.

  2. Run it out into strips and cut into desired lengths.

  3. Wrap pieces in wax paper.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Cocoa + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together65 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Cream + nutstop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together886 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Cream + cocoatop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together304 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Sugar + nutstop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,228 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Forms the body of the taffy and provides its sweetness as it cooks and sets.
Cream of tartar
Acid that discourages sugar crystals, keeping the taffy smooth rather than grainy.
Cocoa nuts
Add fat and coconut aroma, making the taffy richer and softer in texture.

The step that matters

Stop at the soft crack stage. Sugar syrup firms as its temperature rises. Stopping short leaves the taffy sticky and soft, while overcooking past the target makes it hard and brittle. Pour promptly once the stage is reached.

Swap the cocoa

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cream, nuts):

  1. Pistachiofits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Brazil nutfits better
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, nuts. 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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