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Dessert

Toffee, Cocoanut

A sweet confection made by boiling sugar, glucose, and coconut until it reaches the crack stage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and coconut 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 ↓

Toffee, Cocoanut

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Dissolve the granulated and Demerara sugars in the water.

  2. Add the glucose and boil until it reaches the 'little crack' stage.

  3. Remove the saucepan from the heat and stir in the desiccated coconut.

  4. Boil again until it reaches the 'large crack' stage.

  5. Add a few drops of flavoring essence and pour onto oiled or buttered tins.

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 + 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

Granulated sugar
Provides the main sweetness and dissolves to form the syrup base for the toffee.
Demerara sugar
Adds deeper sweetness and a richer, slightly molasses-like flavor to the toffee.
Glucose
Inhibits sugar crystallisation, helping the toffee stay smooth and glossy rather than grainy.
Desiccated coconut
Adds coconut flavor and a chewy texture to the set toffee.

The step that matters

Boiling to the 'large crack' stage. Sugar syrup hardens as its temperature rises and water boils off. Stopping at the right stage sets the firmness you want; boiling too little leaves it soft and sticky, while boiling too far makes it brittle or burnt.

“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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