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 Taffy
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Remove the brown skin from the coconut and slice the meat thin.
Make the taffy
Dissolve the sugar in the water in a saucepan over heat.
Once the syrup is hot, add the coconut meat and cook until the syrup can snap in cold water.
Avoid adding the scrapings, as they will cause the taffy to grain.
Cool
Pour the mixture into a deep pie tin to cool.
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.
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Coconut + sugartop 22% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Coconut
- Adds chewy pieces and rich coconut flavor to the set candy.
- Granulated sugar
- Forms the syrup that cooks down and sets firm and brittle as it cools.
The step that matters
Avoid adding the scrapings. Scrapings can carry sugar crystals into the hot syrup, which seed crystallization. This makes the taffy grainy instead of smooth and glassy.
“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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