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Dessert

Cocoa-nuts

A sweet treat of coconut pieces boiled in sugar syrup and flavored with lemon juice and citron liqueur.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cocoa-nuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sugar and coconut

  1. Drain the prepared cocoa-nut on a sieve.

  2. Boil 1 lb of loaf sugar until it reaches the blow degree.

  3. Add the cocoa-nut to the sugar and boil again, stirring lightly with a fork.

  4. Remove the cocoa-nut shreds with a fork and drain on a sieve.

  5. Boil the sugar again, add the cocoa-nut, and boil once more before draining.

  6. Squeeze a few drops of lemon juice into the sugar, avoiding the seeds, and boil to the pearl degree.

  7. Stir the cocoa-nut lightly in the syrup, then drain on a sieve.

  8. Carefully separate the shreds with two forks.

Serve

  1. When cold, pile the cocoa-nut in a compote dish and pour clear syrup flavored with citron liqueur around it.

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 + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + syruptop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Cocoa + lemontop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together198 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + cocoatop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together956 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Loaf sugar
Forms the syrup that coats the coconut shreds and sets as they cool.
Prepared cocoa-nut
Provides the main body and texture of the dish.
Lemon juice
Adds a touch of acidity that helps keep the sugar syrup from crystallizing.

The step that matters

Boiling the sugar to the pearl degree. Syrup that is boiled too little stays sticky, while overboiling makes it brittle or grainy. Reaching the right stage controls how the coating sets around the shreds.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Pistachiofits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Almondfits better
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, syrup. 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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