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Dessert

Cocoanut Fondants

A sweet treat made from egg white, icing sugar, cocoa, almond essence, and coated in desiccated coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,093 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

Cocoanut Fondants

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fondant

  1. Beat the egg white and icing sugar together in a bowl.

  2. Add the grated cocoa and a little water, mixing until combined.

  3. Stir in the almond essence.

  4. Optionally, color half of the mixture with carmine.

Shape and coat

  1. Take small pieces of the mixture and roll them into shapes.

  2. Dip each piece into desiccated coconut and let them dry.

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. Almond + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  2. Cocoa + coconuttop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Cocoa + almondtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together51 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetylpyrazine (roast).

  4. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg white
Binds the sugar into a cohesive paste that holds its shape when rolled.
Icing sugar
Provides sweetness and most of the bulk of the fondant.
Grated cocoa
Adds chocolate flavor and a brown color to the mixture.
Almond essence
Adds an aroma that complements the cocoa.
Desiccated coconut
Forms a dry, slightly textured coating on the outside of each piece.

The step that matters

Adding the water. Icing sugar absorbs liquid quickly. Adding water a little at a time keeps the paste firm enough to roll; too much makes it sticky and soft, while too little leaves it crumbly and hard to shape.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Cashew nutfits better
  2. Macadamia nutfits better
  3. Brazil nutfits better
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, almond, coconut. 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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