Home › Wholesome Cocoanut Desserts › Dromedary Cocoanut Pie
Dromedary Cocoanut Pie
Baked pie crust 1 cup Dromedary Cocoanut 2¾ cups milk 3 tablespoons cornstarch 1/2 cup sugar 2 eggs, beaten lightly 1 tablespoon butter ine a pie plate with pastry, perforate in several places th a fork and bake in a hot oven. Put cocoanut into aucepan, with two cupfuls of the milk, add cornstarch istened with remainder of milk, sugar, eggs and tter. Cook over a slow fire until thickened and tooth. Turn into the baked crust, sprinkle over with coanut and serve. Cover with meringue, if desired.
A stovetop cornstarch custard poured into a blind-baked shell — quick to assemble, but it stands or falls on how the custard is cooked and cooled.
- Milk quantityThe milk measure is printed as "234 cups," which is a run-together 2¾ cups. That is the right proportion for 3 tablespoons cornstarch and 2 eggs in a 9-inch pie.
- Blind bakingA "hot oven" of this period is usually reckoned at roughly 400-450F. Dock the pastry, line it with parchment and weights for the first 12-15 minutes, then bake uncovered until the base is dry and colored, about 8 minutes more.
- The hinge — temper the eggsWhisk a ladle of the hot milk into the beaten eggs before returning them to the pan, or you get scrambled threads through the custard. Then cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until the cornstarch has boiled for a full minute; undercooked cornstarch tastes chalky and will not set.
- Sweetened vs. unsweetened cocoanutHow the packaged Dromedary cocoanut was sweetened, if at all, is not clear from the recipe; early packaged shredded coconut was often unsweetened. Taste what you have. Modern sweetened flake works as written; with unsweetened desiccated coconut, raise the sugar by a tablespoon or two and soak it briefly in some of the milk.
- Toasting the garnishThe coconut scattered over the top is far better toasted — 5 to 7 minutes at 350F, stirring once. Untoasted, it goes leathery as the pie chills.
- Meringue, if usedBeat 2 whites with 4 tablespoons sugar, spread over the filling while it is still hot so the underside cooks, seal it to the crust edge, and bake at 350F for about 15 minutes.
- Setting and yieldThe recipe does not specify a plate size; the quantities suit a 9-inch pie, about 8 slices. Chill at least 3 hours before cutting; a cornstarch custard cut warm will slump. Keep refrigerated and eat within two days.
Dromedary was a brand name of the Hills Brothers Company of New York, best known for dates but also a seller of packaged shredded coconut in the early twentieth century -- one of a great many manufacturers who published small recipe booklets to teach cooks what to do with a product they had no inherited tradition for. Before commercial shredding and canning, coconut meant buying a whole nut, cracking it, paring and grating it by hand, so the packaged product genuinely changed what a home baker would attempt. Cornstarch cream pies of this type spread widely in American cookery once boxed cornstarch became cheap in the later nineteenth century; they gave the look and richness of a baked custard without the risk of a curdled oven custard, and the coconut version -- top-sprinkled or crowned with meringue -- became a common bakery and lunch-counter pie.