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Cocoanut Indian Fritters
Place in a bowl three tablespoons of flour and scald with sufficient scalding cocoanut milk to make a smooth, stiff paste. Let it cool, then add to it the beaten yolks of four eggs, and the whites of two, with a cup or more (as desired) of fresh, shredded cocoanut. Work this up well together then drop by dessertspoonfuls into boiling fat or oil and fry to a golden brown.
A scalded-flour paste enriched with egg and coconut, closer in method to a choux batter than to a beaten fritter batter. Two things decide whether it works: the paste must be genuinely stiff, and the fat must be hot enough to set the outside before the egg-rich interior collapses.
- Cocoanut milk means the liquid from the nutIn a book of this period this is the thin water and the pressed milk from a fresh coconut, not canned coconut cream and certainly not sweetened cream of coconut. Unsweetened canned coconut milk is the closest substitute; sweetened products will scorch in the fryer.
- Scalding the flourBring the coconut milk to a full simmer and beat it into the flour off the heat until you have a stiff, cohesive paste that pulls from the bowl. Three tablespoons of flour takes very little liquid — add it a spoonful at a time, as too much gives a batter that will not hold a dessertspoonful of shape.
- Cool before the eggs go inThe instruction to let it cool is the hinge. Yolks stirred into hot paste scramble, and the fritters turn granular. Room temperature or barely warm is right.
- Fresh shredded coconutDried desiccated coconut is much drier and will drink moisture out of the paste; if that is all you have, soak it briefly in warm coconut milk and squeeze it out before adding. Frozen grated coconut, thawed, behaves like fresh.
- Fat temperatureThe recipe says only 'boiling fat or oil' and gives no temperature; in modern terms a working range of about 365-375F suits it. Below that the fritters absorb oil and go heavy; above it the coconut shreds on the surface burn before the centre cooks. Fry in small batches so the temperature holds.
- Egg proportionsFour yolks to two whites: the recipe gives no reason for the imbalance, and the extra yolks certainly enrich the paste. There is no leavening beyond the eggs and steam.
- Yield and servingYield depends on how much coconut is used, since the recipe leaves it open at 'a cup or more'; expect somewhere around twenty small fritters. Drain on paper and serve hot, dusted with sugar or with a fruit syrup; they are best eaten straight from the pan.
Coconut was known in American and British kitchens well before the late nineteenth century, but its use expanded as commercially shredded and packaged coconut reached the American market from the 1880s, which is why recipe books of the period suddenly fill with coconut cakes, pies, custards and fritters. The "Indian" in the title may gesture at the East Indies rather than at Indian meal \\ was fashionable in English-language household books, and a fried, egg-rich coconut sweet resembles several South and Southeast Asian fritters \\ though this reading is conjecture, and the direct line is traditional rather than documented. The scalded-paste technique itself is European: it works much like pâte à choux, borrowed here to bind a filling that is mostly coconut and egg with barely three tablespoons of flour to hold it together.