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Pastel De Coco
To the grated meat of one cocoanut take its weight in granulated sugar and one cup of water. Cook until a moderately thick syrup has been formed, adding as it cooks a small cupful of fruit-juice-preferably pineapple. Cook this ten minutes at least, then add the beaten yolks of four eggs, a half-teaspoonful of grated nutmeg and cinnamon mixed, and a half wineglass of wine. Cook very slowly until it thickens evenly (stirring all the while), then spread on a flat dish and let cool before serving. When partially cool sprinkle on this half a cup of grated cocoanut.
This is a coconut sweetmeat in the Spanish-Caribbean style — a sugar syrup enriched with egg yolks and set to cool on a plate, closer to a soft paste than a cake. The whole thing hinges on the yolks: add them to boiling syrup and you get sweet scrambled eggs.
- Temper the yolksTake the syrup off the heat, whisk a ladleful into the beaten yolks, then return the mixture to the pan over the lowest heat. The custard is done at about 175-180F, when it coats a spoon and holds a line drawn by a finger.
- How much coconutOne mature coconut yields roughly 3 to 4 cups grated meat, about 12 to 14 oz. Its weight in granulated sugar is therefore around 2 cups. Weigh rather than measure — the recipe is built on the ratio.
- Cracking and gratingBake the drained nut at 375F for 15 minutes to loosen the shell, crack it, pry out the meat and pare off the brown skin. A food processor does the grating in seconds. Unsweetened frozen grated coconut is a fair substitute; sweetened bagged flake is not, as it will throw the sugar ratio out entirely.
- "Moderately thick syrup"Cook the sugar and water to about 230-235F, the thread-to-soft-ball edge. Past soft ball the finished paste will set hard and grainy once cooled.
- A wineglassIn American books of this period a wineglass is 2 fluid ounces, so half a wineglass is 2 tablespoons. A medium sherry, Madeira or white rum all suit coconut.
- The pineapple juiceCanned juice works well, and the acidity of pineapple juice helps discourage crystallisation in the syrup. Fresh juice contains bromelain, a protease that can interfere with protein setting; boiling inactivates it, so if you use fresh juice do not skip the ten-minute cook before the yolks go in.
- Cooling and servingSpread about half an inch thick on a shallow buttered dish or a rimmed platter. It firms as it cools and can be cut into squares or spooned into small glasses. Expect six to eight servings; refrigerate and eat within three days.
Pastel de coco here means a sweet coconut paste rather than a pastry — in much of the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, pastel and dulce both attach to thick, spoonable confections of this kind, of which dulce de coco and the natilla family are relatives. The technique, sugar syrup thickened with egg yolks alone, is generally traced to Iberian convent sweets, which travelled with Spanish colonisation to the Caribbean, Mexico and the Philippines and settled wherever coconuts and cheap sugar met. Its appearance in an American cookbook of this period reflects a time when Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines had newly entered the United States' commercial orbit and when imported coconuts were reaching northern kitchens. The instruction to reserve half a cup of grated coconut for the top suggests this was meant to look tropical as much as taste it.