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Cocoanut Pink Wafers
4 tablespoons powdered gelatine 6 tablespoons hot milk 1 cup Dromedary Cocoanut Few drops red color 1 teaspoon orange extract 3 cups confectioners' sugar 1 egg-white, beaten Dissolve gelatine in milk, add cocoanut, and soak it in the mixture for 20 minutes. Add color and extract, and allow to cool, and beat in one-half of the sugar. Turn out on a board and knead in remaining sugar.
Roll out and cut in small rounds with a cutter. Brush tops with white of egg, and sprinkle with Dromedary Cocoanut. 2
An uncooked candy of the kind that filled promotional booklets in the 1910s and 1920s: no thermometer, no boiling syrup, just gelatine, sugar and coconut kneaded like a dough. A few of its proportions need a second look.
- The gelatine is the hingeFour tablespoons of powdered gelatine to six tablespoons of hot milk is a very stiff ratio — the mixture sets almost as fast as it dissolves. Have the coconut measured and the sugar sifted before the milk goes on the gelatine, and work quickly once it begins to cool.
- That measurement is ambiguousFour tablespoons is roughly five modern envelopes (about 1 1/4 oz) by volume, and the recipe gives no weight. Whether that much setting power was intended is not recoverable from the text; treat it as a maximum rather than a target.
- Dromedary CocoanutA branded packaged shredded coconut. Fine-shred coconut is the nearest match; if using desiccated coconut, expect it to drink up more of the milk.
- The egg wash is never cookedUnlike a glaze on a baked good, this white of egg is brushed on a finished candy and eaten raw. Use pasteurized egg white, or brush with a little light corn syrup thinned with water, which holds the sprinkled coconut just as well.
- Red color"Few drops red color" meant liquid cochineal or an early coal-tar dye, both weak. Modern gel colors are far more concentrated — one small dab on a toothpick gives the intended pale pink, and more will read as magenta.
- Rolling and cuttingDust the board and rolling pin with confectioners' sugar rather than flour. Roll about 1/4 inch thick and cut with a 1- to 1 1/2-inch round cutter; scraps can be kneaded together and rolled again.
- Drying and storageThe recipe gives no resting time. Leave the cut wafers uncovered on parchment for several hours until the surfaces are dry to the touch, then store in a tin between layers of waxed paper. They keep about a week; refrigeration makes them weep.
- YieldThe recipe states no yield. Three cups of sugar plus a cup of coconut makes a generous batch; the number of wafers depends heavily on rolled thickness and cutter size.
Dromedary was the trade name used by the Hills Brothers Company of New York for its packaged dates and shredded coconut, and booklets like this one existed to give buyers reasons to keep the tin in the pantry — hence a whole section of "Delicious Cocoanut Candies" rather than the one or two coconut sweets a general cookbook of the period would carry. The recipe belongs to the family of uncooked or "cold" candies that became popular once powdered gelatine and boxed confectioners' sugar were cheap and reliable: no sugar boiling, no thermometer, nothing that could seize or grain, and therefore something a home cook or a child could attempt without ruining a pan of syrup. The pink tint and orange flavoring point to the same taste for pastel, perfumed sweets that produced Turkish delight imitations and rose-scented fondants in American candy books of the 1910s and 1920s.