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Cocoa-Nut Sauce
Grate finely the white part of a cocoa-nut, and boil it gently, stirring it well, in a cupful of water, in which has been dissolved its weight, before boiling, in sugar; press it through a sieve; add a cupful of thick cream and the beaten yolk of an egg; put the mixture on the fire for a minute or two, but do not let it boil after the egg is added, for fear it should curdle. Time, altogether, half an hour. Probable cost, cocoa-nut, 4d. or 6d. Sufficient for a moderate-sized pudding.
A Victorian dessert sauce in the custard family: sweetened coconut infusion, sieved, then enriched with cream and an egg yolk. The whole thing hinges on the last minute over the heat.
- Do not let it boil after the yolk goes inOnce the egg is added, hold the pan between about 170 and 180F and stir constantly until it coats the back of a spoon. Above roughly 185F the yolk proteins tighten and the sauce breaks into grains, which is the curdling the original warns about.
- "Cocoa-nut" is coconutThe spelling is common for the period; the ingredient is unrelated to cocoa, though the spelling is usually put down to confusion with cocoa/cacao. The "white part" is the firm meat inside the shell, with the brown skin pared away before grating.
- Fresh nut versus packagedUnsweetened desiccated coconut can stand in for freshly grated; if you use the sweetened kind, reduce the sugar sharply.
- The sugar quantity is ambiguous"Its weight, before boiling, in sugar" most plausibly means sugar equal to the weight of the grated coconut, but the antecedent could be the water. Equal weight to the coconut gives a sauce that is sweet but usable; start with half that and taste.
- A cupfulTake it as 8 fl oz, though Victorian cups were not standardised. The proportions here are forgiving; what matters is that the finished sauce pours rather than mounds.
- Sieving mattersPress hard and scrape, then discard the spent coconut. Skipping this step leaves a gritty sauce, since grated coconut fibre does not soften with half an hour of simmering.
- TimingThe half hour is mostly the gentle boil of coconut in sugar syrup, which should be covered or topped up so it does not reduce to paste.
- Yield and servingRoughly a pint or a little less, which the original calls sufficient for a moderate-sized pudding. Serve warm over a steamed or baked pudding; it thickens further as it cools and can be loosened with a spoonful of cream.
Coconut arrived in British kitchens as a colonial import, and by the time Cassell's compiled its dictionary in the later nineteenth century whole nuts were cheap enough for the book to quote fourpence or sixpence without comment. The method is pure English sweet sauce practice, the same egg-and-cream finish used for custard sauces, with coconut standing in for almond or lemon: draw flavour out with sugar and water, strain, then enrich and thicken with yolk over gentle heat. That warning about curdling is the real lesson, in an era when cooks judged heat by feel over a coal range rather than by a dial or a thermometer.