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Cocoanut Sauce
1 cup milk 1/4 cup shredded cocoanut 2 tablespoons sugar 1 tablespoon cornstarch A few grains salt Save out one tablespoon of the milk with which to stir the cornstarch. To the remainder of the milk add the cocoanut, and heat together in a double boiler for one-half hour. Strain out the cocoanut, pressing it well to get out all the milk. Put the milk back into the double boiler to reheat. Add the sugar. When boiling hot, stir in the cornstarch stirred smooth with the cold milk. Cook five minutes. Add the salt.
A cornstarch-thickened pouring sauce built on coconut-infused milk, of the sort served over steamed puddings, plain cake or baked apples. Nothing here is obscure, but a few habits of 1900 are worth translating.
- The hinge: infuse, then thickenThe half-hour steep is the whole point of the recipe, and it cannot be rushed by boiling the milk hard. Keep the water beneath at a bare simmer so the milk stays below boiling and the coconut gives up its flavor without the milk catching or skinning.
- Which coconutPackaged coconut was sold in more than one form, and some of it was sweetened. Use unsweetened dried shredded or flaked coconut here, or the sauce will be cloying; if all you have is sweetened, cut the sugar to a teaspoon or so and taste.
- Make up the lost milkThe coconut holds on to some liquid, and even pressed well you may recover a little less than a cup. Top the strained milk back up to a full cup with fresh milk before thickening, or the sauce will set somewhat stiffer than intended.
- Slurry techniqueOne tablespoon of cold milk makes a very thick paste with a tablespoon of cornstarch; two tablespoons held back is easier to work with, and the slurry should be stirred smooth again just before it goes in, since cornstarch settles out quickly.
- Cooking the starchFive minutes is enough for cornstarch to thicken and shed its raw taste provided the sauce is properly hot; a double boiler may not bring it to a full simmer, so stir constantly for the first minute after the slurry goes in and give it longer if it still tastes powdery.
- Double boiler substituteA heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water works, provided the bowl does not touch the water. A heavy saucepan over low heat is fine too, but then the milk must be stirred more or less continuously.
- Consistency and yieldOne tablespoon of cornstarch to a cup of milk gives a light pouring sauce that coats a spoon and thins further while warm. It makes about a cup, enough for four to six servings over pudding or cake, and it thickens considerably as it cools -- thin with a spoonful of hot milk if you are serving it cold.
Cornstarch sauces of this kind filled a specific gap in the American household kitchen: they gave the effect of a custard sauce without eggs, which were costly and varied with the season, and without the risk of curdling that made stirred custard a nervous business on a coal range. Desiccated shredded coconut had become an ordinary packaged grocery item in the United States by the 1890s. The instruction to press the coconut well is the economical instinct of the period at work -- the flavor and the fat are in the milk it has soaked up, and throwing that away was not to be considered.