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Cocoanut Pepper Salad
¾ cup Dromedary Cocoanut 1 pkg. (¼ lb.) cream 6 green peppers Salt, paprika, mayonnaise cheese or 1 pkg. cottage cheese Cut slice off tops of peppers, scoop out inside. Cut olives into small pieces and mix with the cocoanut and cheese. Add seasoning. Fill pepper shells with mixture; add a tabespoonful of mayonnaise on top of each. Sprinkle cocoanut over top and a dash of paprika.
A no-cook stuffed pepper from the era when shredded coconut was treated as a savory garnish as readily as a sweet one. It comes together in minutes and depends entirely on chilling.
- The quantitiesRead the coconut as 3/4 cup and the cream cheese as a 1/4-lb package, which is 4 oz. Cottage cheese is offered as an equal substitute; drain it well or the filling will weep.
- OlivesThe method calls for chopped olives although they are not listed among the ingredients. About 1/3 cup pitted green olives, finely chopped, suits this volume of filling and supplies most of the salt.
- Dromedary CocoanutA branded shredded coconut, typically sold moist in tins. Modern sweetened flake is the nearest match; unsweetened desiccated coconut gives a drier, more clearly savory result and is arguably better here.
- PeppersChoose squat, even green bell peppers that will stand upright, and shave a thin slice off the base if they wobble.
- Raw or blanchedAs written the shells stay raw and crisp. If you want them less assertive, drop them in boiling water for one minute, then straight into ice water and dry thoroughly inside before filling.
- Chill and slicePack the filling firmly and chill before serving. As written the peppers are served whole, with the mayonnaise, coconut and paprika added on top of each; if you prefer to cut them crosswise into rings, add the topping after slicing so it does not smear.
- YieldSix peppers serve six as a salad course.
Dromedary was a brand of the Hills Brothers Company, best known for dates and later for packaged cake mixes, and its promotional booklets pushed shredded coconut well past dessert into salads, croquettes and canapes. Recipes like this one belong to the American "salad" of the early twentieth century, a category that meant almost any cold composed dish bound with mayonnaise and served on a lettuce leaf, and stuffed raw vegetables were a favorite of the period. The pairing of coconut with olives and cream cheese looks eccentric now, but sweet-and-salty cold fillings were common ground for the tea-table and the ladies' luncheon, where novelty was much of the point.