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Dessert

Cocoanut Cream Bonbons

A confection made from grated coconut, water, and sugar, boiled to a soft ball and shaped into oblong pieces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Coconut and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,742 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Cocoanut Cream Bonbons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the coconut liquid

  1. Combine grated coconut and cold water in a pan.

  2. Boil for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent scorching.

  3. Remove from heat and let it cool slightly.

  4. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve to extract the liquid.

Make the fondant

  1. Combine sugar and coconut liquid in a copper kettle.

  2. Heat and stir until the sugar dissolves.

  3. Boil the mixture until it reaches the 'soft ball' stage.

  4. Pour the mixture onto a slab and let it cool.

  5. Once cool, granulate the mixture as you would for fondant.

Shape and crystallize

  1. Shape into oblong pieces about 2 inches long and allow to crystallize.

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. Coconut + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,742 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

Fresh coconuts
Provide the flavoring and the liquid that dissolves into the syrup base.
Double refined sugar
Forms the sweet syrup that sets into a fondant that can be shaped and crystallized.

The step that matters

Boiling to the soft ball stage. Sugar syrup must reach the right concentration to set into a fine, creamy fondant. Too little boiling leaves the candy soft and sticky, while overboiling makes it hard and grainy.

“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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