Home › Simple Cocoanut Desserts › Cocoanut Prune Delight
Cocoanut Prune Delight
2 lbs. prunes ¼ cup sugar 1 teaspoon lemon extract 2 cups Dromedary Cocoanut Wash and pick over prunes.
Cover with cold water and soak 3 hours. Cook in the same water until soft, then rub through a sieve, add sugar and extract. Put this purée and cocoanut in layers in a pudding dish, top with cocoanut and decorate with a preserved cherr
An assembled, unbaked dessert of prune purée layered with shredded coconut. Everything depends on the purée being thick enough to hold a layer.
- The sugar quantityThe original reads "14 cup sugar," which is a typographic rendering of 1/4 cup. That is very little for 2 lb of fruit, and it is the right call only if you are using sweetened coconut; taste the purée and adjust.
- Thickness is the hingeThe recipe says only to cook the prunes in their soaking water and sieve them; cooking uncovered so the liquid reduces, and sieving while still warm, helps. A watery purée will bleed into the coconut and the layers will not hold. It should mound on a spoon.
- Prunes and pitsPrunes of this period were commonly sold with the stones in, which is one reason the recipe sends everything through a sieve; the sieve also catches the skins. With modern pitted prunes you can use a food processor instead, though a sieve still gives a smoother result.
- Soaking timeThree hours suits the hard, heavily dried prunes of the period. Today's moist pitted prunes need about 30 minutes in cold water, or simply simmer them 15-20 minutes until soft.
- The coconutDromedary coconut was a packaged shredded coconut, probably closer to today's unsweetened shredded than to sweetened flake. Sweetened flaked coconut works but will push the dessert quite sweet against only 1/4 cup sugar.
- Lemon extractA full teaspoon of extract is assertive by modern standards. The zest of one lemon, or half a teaspoon of extract, gives the same lift without the alcoholic edge.
- Chilling and yieldNo oven is involved; the recipe gives no dish size, chilling time or yield. Assembling ahead and refrigerating lets the layers set and the coconut soften into the fruit. Two pounds of prunes makes a large quantity, so choose the dish accordingly.
- The preserved cherryThis most likely means a maraschino or similar preserved cherry, set on the coconut top as a finish.
Dromedary was the brand name of the Hills Brothers Company of New York, which built its business on packaged dates and on shredded coconut sold in sealed tins — a genuine convenience at a time when the alternative was cracking and grating a whole nut. Booklets like this one were promotional literature, distributed free to put the product into as many recipes as possible, which explains the two full cups of coconut in a dessert whose real substance is prunes. Prunes themselves were a staple of the American pantry around 1900, cheap, keeping indefinitely, and often said to be a wholesome fruit for children and invalids; layering their purée with coconut turns a nursery food into something presentable at table. The spelling "cocoanut" was standard in American cookbooks well into the 1920s.