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Cocoanut Drops
Take one cocoanut, grate and dry it a little, then mix with the beaten whites of two eggs, sixteen teaspoons powdered sugar; make them in small balls and bake quickly.
A three-ingredient coconut macaroon from the days when a cook started with the whole nut. The proportions are lean on sugar by modern standards, so the mixture is looser and the drops set softer than a bakery macaroon.
- One cocoanutA whole coconut yields roughly 3 to 4 cups of grated meat, about 12 oz. Packaged unsweetened desiccated coconut is the closest substitute; sweetened flake will make the drops cloying against this small amount of sugar.
- Grate and dry it a littleFresh coconut is wet, and undried meat will slump into puddles on the sheet. Spread the gratings in a low oven, around 250F, for 10 to 15 minutes until they no longer feel damp, then cool before mixing.
- Sixteen teaspoons powdered sugarThat is 5 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon, or exactly one-third of a cup. "Powdered sugar" in this period generally meant granulated or loaf sugar ground fine rather than the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold now; either will work here.
- Beaten whitesThe recipe does not say how far to beat them. Soft peaks are enough — the whites are a binder here, not a meringue, and stiffly beaten whites fold badly into coarse coconut.
- Bake quicklyPeriod sources vary, but a "quick" oven is generally put somewhere around 400 to 450F. Drops this small colour in a very few minutes at that heat; watch from about four minutes on and pull them when the tips are just brown. A moderate 350F will give a more even set.
- ShapingPress the balls firmly between damp hands so they hold, and set them on parchment or a well-buttered sheet. With this little sugar they are fragile hot and need a minute on the pan before moving.
- YieldRoughly two to three dozen walnut-sized drops. They are best eaten within a few days, and go soft in a tin after that.
Coconut drops of this kind are often read as sitting at the meeting point of two older sweets: the almond macaroon of European confectionery, bound with egg white and sugar, and the coconut sweetmeats of the West Indies, though the descent is a plausible reading rather than a documented one. Coconuts are generally said to have reached northern American and British kitchens in quantity through nineteenth-century Caribbean shipping, and by the second half of the century whole nuts were a familiar grocery item, and the reader owned a grater and knew how to crack one. The very short ingredient list is typical of household books of the era, which recorded proportions for cooks who already knew the method and needed only reminding of the ratio.