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Dessert

Cocoanut Chocolate Drops

A sweet treat of coconut and chocolate, made by boiling sugar, glucose, and water, adding coconut, shaping, and dipping in chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Coconut and chocolate are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,107 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Cocoanut Chocolate Drops

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a candy kettle, combine sugar, glucose, and water.

  2. Boil the mixture until it reaches 244°F (118°C).

Shape and dip

  1. Once ready to cream, add the grated coconut and knead slightly.

  2. Shape the mixture in a starch mold or form into drops.

  3. Dip the drops in melted chocolate.

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 + chocolatetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,107 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  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
Provides sweetness and forms the firm sugar mass as the syrup cools and sets.
Glucose
Interferes with sugar crystal formation, keeping the mixture smooth and less grainy.
Coconut
Adds texture and body to the kneaded mixture.
Chocolate
Forms a coating that sets around the drops.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup to 244°F (118°C). The final sugar concentration determines how the centres set when cooled. Stopping too early leaves them soft and sticky, while boiling too long makes them hard and brittle.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutthe original
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Raspberryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, chocolate. 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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