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Dessert

Cocoanut Toffee

A sweet treat made from coconut, sugar, egg whites, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Coconut and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,467 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cocoanut Toffee

Ingredients

Directions

Make the toffee

  1. Boil the sugar in the water from the coconuts until it becomes a thick syrup.

  2. Add the scraped coconuts and stir well.

  3. Beat the egg whites and mix them in along with the butter. Do not cook for long.

Set and cut

  1. Spread the mixture in a buttered dish.

  2. Cut into slices or squares once set.

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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. 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

Sugar
Forms the thick syrup that binds the coconut and sets into toffee.
Egg whites
Add structure and lightness to the mixture as they are beaten in.
Scraped coconuts
Provide the main coconut flavour and bulk to the toffee.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother texture to the mixture.

The step that matters

Do not cook for long. Once the egg whites are mixed in, overcooking can make the mixture grainy, dry and hard rather than soft and chewy. Keeping this stage brief helps the toffee stay tender.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Coconutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, butter. 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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