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Dessert

Cocoanut Fudge

A sweet fudge made with brown sugar, milk, butter, coconut, and flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cocoanut Fudge

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine brown sugar and milk in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Bring to a boil, then add butter and cook until slightly past the soft ball stage.

  3. Remove from heat and let cool.

  4. Stir the mixture as you would for fondant.

  5. Once cooled, knead in the shredded coconut and transfer to a pan.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

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

  3. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Brown sugar
Provides sweetness and the bulk of the fudge's structure as it crystallizes.
Milk
Dissolves the sugar and adds moisture and richness to the fudge.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, tender texture and richer flavor.
Shredded coconut
Adds chewy texture and coconut flavor to the finished fudge.

The step that matters

Stir the mixture as you would for fondant. Stirring during cooling controls sugar crystal formation. Stirring too early or too little can leave the fudge grainy or hard, while stirring at the right moment yields a smooth, creamy texture.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Coconutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, 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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