Home › Wholesome Cocoanut Desserts › Dromedary Date Custards
Dromedary Date Custards
1 package Dromedary Dates 2 eggs, beaten 2 tablespoons cornstarch 3 tablespoons sugar 4 cups milk 1 teaspoon vanilla extract Whipped and sweetened cream Dromedary Cocoanut Stone dates and cut them into fine pieces; divide into individual serving dishes. Put eggs into upper pan of a double boiler, add cornstarch mixed with sugar, milk and vanilla, and cook over hot water, stirring constantly until it thickens. Cool and pour over dates. Cover with cream and decorate with cocoanut.
A stirred pouring custard thickened with both egg and cornstarch, spooned over chopped dates. The proportions are light on starch, so expect a sauce-like custard rather than a set one.
- "1 package" of datesPackage sizes are not specified and the original quantity is genuinely ambiguous. Somewhere between 8 oz and 1 lb of pitted dates works; 8 to 10 oz is enough to line six to eight dishes generously.
- ConsistencyTwo tablespoons of cornstarch to four cups of milk gives a thin, spoonable custard, closer to a thick crème anglaise than a pudding. If you want it to hold its shape in the dish, double the cornstarch.
- Temper the eggsWhisking cold milk into beaten eggs in the top pan, as written, is safe enough, but bring the mixture up slowly and stir without stopping. Anything above a gentle simmer beneath the pan will scramble the eggs before the starch has a chance to set.
- Cook it further than looks necessaryCornstarch needs to be taken well past first thickening or the starch stays chalky and the raw-flour taste lingers, but the eggs limit how hot you can go over a double boiler. Once it coats the spoon heavily, hold it there half a minute more, still stirring.
- Vanilla timingThe original adds vanilla at the start; extract loses aroma over a long cook. Stirring it in off the heat gives a noticeably stronger flavor.
- CoolingLay plastic wrap directly on the surface while it cools, or you will get a skin that breaks up into strings when poured. Cool to at least room temperature before it goes over the dates, which otherwise weep.
- "Cocoanut"Packaged shredded coconut of the period was generally drier and finer than modern sweetened flake, which is wetter and sweeter; toasting unsweetened shred for a few minutes gets closer to the intended garnish.
- YieldAbout six to eight small serving dishes, given four cups of milk. It is a rich dessert in a small glass rather than a bowlful.
Dromedary was a date brand of the Hills Brothers Company of New York, and this booklet is the classic form of American branded recipe promotion: a small collection of dishes each built around a package the reader was expected to buy, here dates and shredded coconut together. Dates reached ordinary American kitchens in quantity only after late nineteenth-century improvements in packing and shipping made pressed, boxed fruit from North Africa and the Middle East cheap and shelf-stable, and cookbooks of the period treat them as a sweetener and a novelty at once. The custard itself is entirely conventional for its date -- a boiled or double-boiler custard stretched with cornstarch, a thrifty habit that used fewer eggs than a pure custard and was far more forgiving on a coal or gas range where low, even heat was hard to hold. Dates were marketed in this era as a healthful, nourishing food, an argument that let a sugared dessert be sold as something close to nutrition.