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Cocoanut Pie
1 cup chopped cocoanut, 3 eggs, 1 cup cream, 1 cup milk, 2 tablespoons cornstarch, 4 tablespoons cold water, 2 tablespoons Crisco, 6 tablespoons sugar, and some Crisco pastry. Line 2 pie plates with Crisco pastry. Put milk and cream into saucepan, bring to boiling point, add cornstarch mixed with water. Remove saucepan from fire, stir in Crisco. Let stand until perfectly cold. Beat up yolks of eggs and sugar together, then add cocoanut to them. Add this mixture to milk with stiffly beaten whites of eggs. Divide into prepared pie plates and bake in moderate oven for 30 minutes. Serve hot.
A soft coconut custard, thickened first on the stove and then folded with beaten whites so it half-souffles in the shell. The book is a Crisco promotion, which explains the shortening in both the pastry and the filling.
- Moderate ovenRead as roughly 350F; period sources put a moderate oven anywhere from 350 to 375F. Thirty minutes is right for a shallow pie plate; the filling should be just set at the edge with a slight wobble at the centre.
- YieldThe quantities fill two shallow single-crust pies; the recipe does not give a size, and period plates commonly ran about 8 to 9 inches. In one modern 9-inch deep plate the filling will be thin and will bake faster, so start checking at 20 minutes.
- Cocoanut"Chopped" points to fresh coconut meat, pared and chopped or grated, unsweetened and quite moist, though packaged shredded desiccated coconut was also on sale by this date. Desiccated or sweetened flaked coconut is much drier and far sweeter; if you use sweetened flake, cut the sugar back or the pie will cloy.
- Six tablespoons of sugarThat is under half a cup across two pies, which reads as barely sweet to a modern palate accustomed to coconut cream pie. It suits a custard the recipe tells you to serve hot rather than a dessert showpiece.
- CriscoHydrogenated vegetable shortening, still sold and reformulated since (no longer partially hydrogenated). Butter works in both the pastry and the filling and tastes better; the shortening is here because the publisher sold it.
- Let stand until perfectly coldThis matters. If the cornstarch base is still warm it will slacken the beaten whites and cook the yolks on contact, and the pie loses its lift. Chill the pan in cold water if you are impatient, with a film of shortening or a lid to stop a skin forming.
- FoldingFold the whites in last and gently, then get the pies into the oven at once. The whites are the only leavening; the cornstarch alone would give a dense, sliceable custard.
- Soggy bottomA wet custard in a raw shell tends to leave the base pale. Blind-bake the crusts for 8 to 10 minutes before filling if you want a crisp bottom.
- Serve hotTaken literally, as the recipe says. The pie will sink and firm as it cools, which is not a fault, only a different pudding.
A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil, cookery editor of the Ladies' Home Journal, and published by Procter & Gamble to promote Crisco, which had come on the market in 1911. Crisco is called for throughout, often twice in a dish, as here in both pastry and custard; the book is best read as an argument that a vegetable fat could do everything lard and butter did. Coconut reached American kitchens in quantity in the late nineteenth century, first as whole nuts from the Caribbean trade and then as shredded desiccated coconut sold in packets, and it turns up constantly in period puddings, cakes and custard pies.