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Cocoa-Nut Macaroons
Take a fresh cocoa-nut, grate it finely, and allow half a pound of finely-sifted sugar and the whites of four eggs beaten to a firm froth to every quarter of a pound of cocoa-nut. Mix the ingredients thoroughly. Drop little balls of the paste upon a well-buttered tin about two inches apart from one another. Bake in a moderate oven. When the macaroons are lightly browned all over they will be ready. Time to bake, about twenty minutes. Probable cost, 1s. 6d. per pound. Sufficient, eighteen or twenty for a dessert-dish.
A three-ingredient meringue-and-coconut drop that behaves quite differently depending on the coconut you use. The proportions are worth reading twice before you shop.
- The ratio is the recipeHalf a pound of sugar to a quarter pound of coconut is two parts sugar to one part coconut by weight — roughly 225 g sugar, 115 g grated coconut, four egg whites. That much sugar is what sets the meringue and gives the crisp shell; cutting it substantially gives a soft, spreading biscuit rather than a macaroon.
- Fresh coconut versus packagedA grated fresh nut carries a good deal of moisture and its own fat. Desiccated coconut is bone dry and will drink the whites, giving a stiff, sandy paste; unsweetened frozen grated coconut, thawed and drained, is the closer substitute. Sweetened flaked coconut throws the sugar balance out entirely.
- Cracking the nutPierce the softest of the three eyes and drain the water, then bake the nut at 350F for 15 minutes or tap it around its equator until it splits. The brown skin can be pared off with a vegetable peeler before grating; leaving it on gives grey specks but no harm.
- "A moderate oven"350F/175C. These are sugar-heavy and colour fast at the edges before the centres set, so the lower end of moderate — 325F — is safer if your oven runs hot.
- Folding, not stirring"Mix the ingredients thoroughly" will deflate whites beaten to a firm froth. Fold the sugar and coconut in in two or three additions with a spatula; the batter should hold a soft mound when dropped, not slump flat.
- The tinA well-buttered tin was the period answer to sticking, but sugar this high still welds itself down. Parchment or a silicone mat lifts them cleanly; period cookery books also give edible rice paper for the same purpose.
- TimingAbout twenty minutes is right at 350F for balls the size of a walnut, but go by colour: lightly browned all over, dry to a light touch, still a little chewy within. Let them cool on the sheet before moving or they tear.
- YieldEighteen to twenty from this quantity, as the book says — enough for one dessert dish. They keep three or four days in a tin, and go sticky in a humid kitchen.
Macaroons in English cookery books of the nineteenth century were almond confections of sugar and egg white, and typically little or no flour — and the coconut version is a straightforward substitution of one cheap imported nut for another. Whole coconuts reached British ports in quantity in the second half of the century, and by the time Cassell's was compiled they are likely to have been familiar enough that a household cook could reasonably be told to "take a fresh cocoa-nut" without further explanation. The book gives a costing of 1s. 6d. per pound. The spelling "cocoa-nut", standard throughout the Victorian period, reflects an old confusion with cocoa the cacao product; it faded from print in the twentieth century.