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Cocoa-Nut Cream
Put a cupful of cold spring water into a saucepan with the thin rind of a quarter of a small lemon, three table-spoonfuls of sifted sugar, a small piece of stick cinnamon, and a table-spoonful of the white of the cocoa-nut sliced. Boil gently to a thick syrup; then add the milk of two cocoa-nuts thickened with a table-spoonful of cornflour or arrowroot. Let all boil up together for a minute or two, add a cupful of cream, strain, and stir until cold. Just before serving, put with the cream half a wine-glassful of brandy and three or four drops of vanilla essence. Time, half an hour. Probable cost, 1s. 6d., exclusive of the brandy. This is a good sauce for a sweet pudding.
A pouring sauce rather than a set cream, built on the water inside the coconut rather than on tinned coconut milk. The distinction is the whole recipe.
- "The milk of two cocoa-nuts"This means the thin, sweet water drained from inside two fresh coconuts, not the thick pressed cream sold in tins. Two nuts give roughly 1 to 1 1/2 cups; tinned coconut milk would make the sauce heavy and opaque, which is not what is wanted here.
- "The white of the cocoa-nut"The firm meat, pared off the shell and sliced thin. Only a tablespoonful is used, and it is strained out later, so it is there for flavour rather than texture.
- CornflourBritish cornflour is American cornstarch. Arrowroot gives a clearer, glossier sauce and sets a little more lightly; either works, but slake it in a spoonful of cold coconut water before it goes near the pan.
- Sifted sugar and thin rindSifted sugar is sugar crushed and passed through a sieve, roughly comparable to modern caster sugar. Take the lemon rind in wide pared strips with no white pith, or the syrup turns bitter as it reduces.
- Half a wine-glassfulA Victorian wine glass is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz, so this is roughly 1 fl oz, about two tablespoons of brandy. It goes in at the end, off the heat, so the alcohol is not driven off.
- Do not boil after the creamThe cream goes in after the thickened coconut water has boiled up; take the pan off the heat at that point. A minute of hard boiling with cream in it will curdle the sauce or throw the starch out of suspension.
- Stir until coldNot optional. A starch-thickened sauce left standing forms a skin and sets in a lump; stirring as it cools keeps it pourable. Strain first, then stir.
- Yield and servingRoughly two to three cups once the syrup has reduced, enough for a pudding for eight or so. Serve cool, not chilled hard, alongside a steamed or baked sweet pudding.
Cassell's belongs to a period when the coconut had become cheap enough in Britain for a household cook to buy two at once and use only the water from them, which would have been far less likely a century earlier. The spelling "cocoa-nut" was common through much of the nineteenth century and is generally traced to confusion with cacao. The construction of the sauce follows conventional English pudding-sauce practice: a lemon-and-cinnamon syrup, a starch thickening, cream, and a spirit and essence added at the last moment so neither is cooked away. What is distinctive is the use of coconut water where milk or wine would more usually form the liquid base.