Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓
Cocoanut Cream Candy
Ingredients
Directions
Make the syrup
Dissolve the sugar in enough water to cover it in a saucepan.
Add a pinch of cream of tartar and boil for 10 minutes.
Finish and spread
When nearly cooked, stir in the finely chopped coconut.
Beat the mixture until creamy and spread it on white or stiff yellow paper.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Cream + coconuttop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,223 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Sugar + coconuttop 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
- Sugar
- Forms the sweet base of the candy and, once cooked and beaten, sets into a firm, creamy texture.
- Cream of tartar
- Acid that helps prevent the sugar from crystallizing, keeping the candy smooth.
- Coconut
- Adds flavor and chewy texture to the creamy candy mixture.
The step that matters
Beating the mixture until creamy. Beating a boiled sugar syrup while it cools causes fine crystals to form, giving a creamy rather than hard texture. Beating too early or too long can make it set too stiff to spread.
Swap the coconut
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cream):
- Vanillafits better
- Strawberryfits better
- Raspberryfits better
- Coconutthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream. 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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