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Dromedary Confection
2 cups Dromedary Dates ½ teaspoon salt 1 cup Dromedary Cocoanut Confectioners' sugar Wash dates, remove stones, measure and add cocoanut. Put through food chopper together and add salt; mix thoroughly. Use one tablespoonful for each confection, shape in round flat cakes and roll in plenty of confectioners' sugar; or roll out one-fourth inch thick with rolling pin on board sprinkled with confectioners' sugar. Sprinkle with granulated sugar and cut in fancy shapes with small cutters.
A no-cook confection that depends entirely on the texture of the ground paste. Two ingredients and salt, so the proportions and the grind are everything.
- The food chopperThis means a hand-cranked meat grinder, which shears the dates and coconut into a coarse, cohesive paste rather than a purée. A food processor works if you pulse rather than run it, stopping while the mixture still shows flecks of coconut; run it continuously and you get a sticky ball that will not roll out cleanly.
- The salt is not a typo, but taste itThe salt looks high, but taste as you go -- A teaspoon and a half against two cups of dates reads as a lot, and it may well be intentional: salt is the only thing cutting an otherwise flat sweetness. A slip for a smaller measure cannot be ruled out either. Modern table salt is finer and denser than the salt of the period, so start with a teaspoon, taste the paste, and add the rest if the mixture tastes cloying.
- CocoanutDromedary sold dried shredded coconut, which appears to have been unsweetened desiccated coconut rather than anything sugared. Standard supermarket sweetened flaked coconut will make these markedly sweeter and wetter; unsweetened shredded or desiccated coconut is the closer match.
- DatesPackaged dates of this period were generally firmer and less syrupy than the Medjool now sold everywhere. Medjools work but give a much softer paste that may need extra coconut or a rest in the refrigerator before it will hold a shape.
- StoningSlit each date lengthwise with a paring knife and lift the pit out; do not try to squeeze them. Check the count against the date count, since a single missed pit will damage a grinder or a processor blade.
- Rolling outChill the paste for twenty minutes before rolling. Keep the board and rolling pin generously dusted with confectioners' sugar and lift the sheet with an offset spatula, or the quarter-inch slab will stick and tear.
- Yield and keepingTwo cups of dates with a cup of coconut gives something on the order of three dozen tablespoon-sized cakes, or more if cut in small shapes. They keep about two weeks in a tin between layers of waxed paper; the confectioners' sugar coating will slowly dissolve into the surface, so re-dust before serving.
Dromedary was the date and coconut brand of the Hills Brothers Company of New York, and this booklet is a piece of brand promotion of a familiar type -- this recipe calls for two Dromedary products by name. Packaged dates and desiccated coconut were both relatively new conveniences for the American home cook in the early twentieth century, when commercial date growing in California's Coachella Valley was expanding and imported dates were being cleaned and boxed for grocery shelves rather than sold loose from the barrel. Confections like this one, requiring no cooking, no candy thermometer and no sugar boiling, suited such booklets well: they made the product look effortless and they asked little of a household beyond the hand-cranked food chopper clamped to the kitchen table.