Kisses
Take the whites of 3 eggs well beaten, then stir in a cup of white sugar. Put on stove in a steamer or over water until light. Remove from stove and add 1 tablespoon cornstarch, 1 tablespoon vanilla, ½ pound cocoanut. Put on greased paper or tin. Bake until brown.
Icing sugar may be used.
A coconut meringue drop, cooked twice: first over water to stabilise the whites, then in the oven to dry and colour. Two figures in the original need adjusting for modern ingredients.
- The vanillaOne tablespoon of vanilla in a batch this size will taste harsh and thin the meringue. Household vanilla of the period was variable in strength and often much weaker than today's extract; 1 to 2 teaspoons is the sensible equivalent.
- The double boiler"A steamer or over water" means a bowl set over simmering water, not touching it. Whisk constantly until the mixture is hot, glossy and holds a ribbon — this is what sets the structure, and it is the step that decides whether the kisses hold their shape or spread.
- Coconut, half a poundAbout 2 2/3 cups of dried unsweetened desiccated coconut. Modern sweetened flaked coconut is wetter and much sweeter; if you use it, cut the sugar back by a third.
- A cup of white sugarRoughly 200 g of granulated sugar. Superfine or caster dissolves faster in the warm whites and gives a smoother meringue.
- CornstarchCorn flour in British usage. Its job here is to absorb moisture and keep the drops from weeping. Note that if you take up the closing suggestion and use icing (confectioners') sugar, modern versions of it usually already contain a little cornstarch, so you may want to reduce the added spoonful.
- Oven heatNo temperature or time is given; the book leaves oven heat to the cook's judgement. A slow to moderate oven, around 300 to 325F for 20 to 25 minutes, suits them — long enough to dry through and take colour. Hotter and the exteriors brown before the centres set.
- Greased paper or tinParchment, ungreased, is better than either. Meringue sticks to bare metal and greased paper encourages spreading.
- YieldAbout 30 kisses dropped by the teaspoon. Cool them completely on the paper before lifting, and store airtight — they soften quickly in humid air.
The Five Roses Cook Book was issued by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company of Montreal in the 1910s and distributed to buyers of its flour, its contents largely gathered from Canadian housewives who used the brand. That origin explains the recipe's shape: no oven temperature, no timing, no yield, because it was written down by someone who already knew what her range did. "Kisses" was the common nineteenth-century name for small baked meringue drops, often said to derive from the French baiser used for the same confection, though the derivation is traditional rather than documented, and by the time this book appeared the word covered anything light, sweet and dropped in spoonfuls. The half pound of coconut marks the recipe as modern for its day: desiccated coconut became a cheap pantry staple in North America only in the last decades of the 1800s, and it turns up constantly in candy and cake sections of books from this period.