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Date Macaroons
Beat the whites of three eggs stiff, then add gradually a half pound of powdered sugar (a dessertspoonful of cornstarch sifted through the sugar); one-half cup of finechopped nuts and one of dates, and the rind of an orange grated. Work well together gently, adding enough grated cocoanut to make stiff enough to form into balls. Very little cocoanut will be required, so it is best to add but a tablespoonful first and bake a "try-cake" as a test.
A meringue-based macaroon of the sort that fills the "Date-Cocoanut" pages of turn-of-the-century fruit cookbooks. The original gives no oven temperature and no time, which is where most of the guidance is needed.
- The hinge: bake the try-cakeThe recipe is right that the coconut is the variable, and the advice to bake a single test ball before committing the batch is the whole method. Grated fresh coconut is wet and adds little thickening; modern dried shredded or desiccated coconut is thirsty and will stiffen the mixture with a fraction of the amount. Start with a tablespoon, bake one, and only add more if the test spreads flat.
- "Powdered sugar" hereIn this period powdered sugar generally meant sugar ground fine, closer to today's superfine or caster sugar than to modern confectioners' sugar; the recipe adds its own cornstarch, sifted through the sugar. Modern confectioners' sugar already contains cornstarch, so if you use it, skip the added starch. Half a pound is about 1 cup of superfine sugar or roughly 2 cups of sifted confectioners' sugar.
- DessertspoonfulTwo level teaspoons. It is a British measure that sits between a teaspoon and a tablespoon and appears constantly in books of this era.
- OvenTreat these as meringues rather than cookies: a slow to moderate oven, 300-325F, for 20-25 minutes, until set and barely coloured. Higher heat browns the sugar and toasts the coconut before the centres firm.
- PanThe original says nothing about the pan. Parchment or a silicone mat is far kinder to a sugar-and-egg-white batter, which sticks ferociously once cooled.
- Chopping the datesDates vary a good deal in moisture, and soft modern pitted dates clump readily. Chop them with a little of the measured sugar to keep the pieces separate, or they will mass together when you fold them in.
- Folding"Work well together gently" means fold, not beat. The whites are the only leavening and the only structure; overworking gives a dense, chewy sweet rather than a light macaroon.
- YieldThree whites and half a pound of sugar make roughly 24 to 30 walnut-sized balls. They keep several days in a tin but soften quickly in humid weather.
Before the coconut macaroon became a supermarket fixture, the word macaroon simply meant a small cake bound with beaten egg white and sugar, with almonds as the traditional filler; coconut, dates, and chopped nuts were nineteenth-century substitutions that took hold in American kitchens as imported dried fruit and shredded coconut became cheap and reliably available. Dates arrived in quantity from North Africa and the Persian Gulf through the late 1800s, and by the time fruit-focused cookbooks like this one were being compiled they were common enough to appear alongside coconut. The instruction to bake a single "try-cake" is a small window onto the period: with no standard grade of coconut, no measured egg sizes, and an oven whose temperature the cook was often said to judge by hand, testing one before risking the batch was ordinary prudence rather than fussiness.