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Cocoanut and Orange Flowers
When at its first creamy ("spoon") stage serve the cocoanut from the shell, in convenient pieces, or scraped on to a serving-dish, and sprinkled with the fresh or candied petals of orange-flowers. The preserved orange flowers may be used with this, also. Cream, sugar, a meringue, or wine may be served with it.
This is an assembly rather than a cooked dish, and everything depends on getting a coconut at the right stage. The "spoon" coconut of the original is a young nut whose flesh is still soft enough to eat with a spoon, not the hard, dry mature meat sold shredded in bags.
- The hinge: the right coconutA mature brown coconut will not work at all. Look for a young green or shaved white "young coconut" (often labelled nam hom or sold chilled in Asian and Latin markets); its interior is a translucent, custardy layer that scrapes away cleanly from the shell. Once the flesh turns opaque and firm it has passed the spoon stage.
- Opening itShave the top with a heavy cleaver until you reach the shell, then tap a circle to lift a lid, or drill and drain first if you want the water separately. The water is worth keeping and can be poured back over the scraped flesh.
- Orange flowersFresh citrus blossom is edible but seasonal and short-lived; use only blossom you know has not been sprayed, and pick the petals free of the bitter green calyx. Candied and preserved orange flowers were part of the confectioner's repertoire in this period, and are specialty stock now.
- If you cannot get blossomA few drops of orange flower water gives a similar perfume, though not the texture. It is potent — start with about a quarter teaspoon for a whole coconut and taste.
- "A meringue"Since it is to be "served with it," a baked meringue shell or spooned meringue kisses alongside is the likely reading rather than a soft topping browned on the dish. Store-bought meringue nests are a fair equivalent.
- The wineThe recipe specifies only "wine"; a sweet wine such as Madeira, sweet sherry or a Muscat suits the dish. Whether it was poured over or handed separately is not stated.
- Yield and servingNo yield is given; one young coconut will do for about two as a light dessert. Cold is best: the flesh dulls and weeps if it sits at room temperature, so scrape it out shortly before serving.
Fruit cookery books of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were often written to promote unfamiliar tropical produce reaching northern markets through Florida, the Caribbean and improving steamer transport, and "spoon" coconut is a good example of something that only makes sense close to the source — a young nut travels poorly, and inland readers would have known coconut chiefly as desiccated shreds in a cake. The pairing with orange flowers sits within a long confectioner's tradition: orange flower water and candied citrus blossom were established in European sweet-making by the seventeenth century and remained on the grocer's shelf well into the twentieth. The instruction to offer cream, sugar, a meringue or wine at the table, rather than dictating one, is characteristic of the period's dessert writing, where the cook assembled and the diner finished the dish.