Skip to main content
Dessert

Molasses Cocoanut Jap

A sweet cake made from molasses, butter, and grated coconut, boiled until it reaches a hard ball stage and then cooled into squares.

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

Why it works: Molasses and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 30% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,123 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Molasses Cocoanut Jap

Ingredients

Directions

Make the candy

  1. Place molasses and butter in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. Bring to a boil, then add grated coconut.

  3. Stir until the mixture reaches a hard ball stage.

Set and cut

  1. Pour onto a greased surface and spread to desired thickness with a palette knife.

  2. Once cooled, cut into squares or diamonds.

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. Molasses + buttertop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,123 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

New orleans molasses
Provides the bulk of the sweetness and dark, rich flavor, and sets firm as it cools.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother texture and helps keep the candy from being brittle.
Grated coconut
Adds chewy texture and a distinct coconut flavor to the candy.

The step that matters

Stir until the mixture reaches a hard ball stage. Sugar syrups set according to their temperature. Stopping too early leaves the candy soft and sticky, while cooking too long makes it hard and brittle once cooled.

“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

Molasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesMolasses Sponge CakeMolasses Sponge Cake9 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipes