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Dessert

Coconut Fondant Candy

A sweet candy made by cooking sugar and water to soft ball stage, then mixing in coconut and setting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Coconut Fondant Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Dissolve the sugar in the water in a saucepan.

  2. Add the cream of tartar and boil until it reaches the soft ball stage.

  3. Ensure the syrup does not form crystals on the side of the pan.

Shape and set

  1. Mix the grated coconut into the fondant until it holds well.

  2. Spread the mixture on buttered plates and cut into 1‑inch squares.

  3. Leave to harden.

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. Cream + coconuttop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,223 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + coconuttop 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

Sugar
Forms the sweet base of the fondant once dissolved and boiled into syrup.
Cream of tartar
Acid that helps prevent sugar from crystallising, keeping the fondant smooth.
Grated coconut
Adds flavour and texture to the fondant mixture.

The step that matters

Ensure the syrup does not form crystals on the side of the pan. Sugar crystals clinging to the pan can seed grainy crystallisation throughout the syrup, so the fondant turns gritty instead of smooth. Keeping the sides clean, often by washing them down, helps prevent this.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Coconutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream. 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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