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Cocoanut Drops
The white part of a grated cocoanut, whites of four eggs well beaten, one-half pound sifted white sugar. Flavor with rose water or lemon. Mix all as thick as can be stirred; lay in heaps half an inch apart, on paper or on a baking-pan, in a hot oven. Take them out when they begin to look yellowish.--Mrs. R.
A meringue-bound coconut drop, essentially a macaroon without flour or butter. The whole thing hinges on the oven: "hot" here means hot enough to set and lightly colour the outside before the interior weeps, but these will scorch long before a true hot oven has finished with them.
- Oven temperatureModern conversion tables usually put a "hot oven" at around 400-450F, which is too fierce for an egg-white and sugar batter; the book itself gives no temperatures. Bake at 325-350F and watch for the faint yellowing the recipe describes, usually 15-20 minutes.
- The coconut"The white part of a grated cocoanut" means the meat of one whole nut with the brown skin pared off, about 3 to 3 1/2 cups grated. Unsweetened desiccated coconut works but is much drier; use about 3 cups and expect a stiffer mixture.
- Half a pound of sugarRoughly 1 1/8 cups of granulated. "Sifted white sugar" in this period usually means a finer-ground sugar passed through a sieve, so caster sugar dissolves into the whites more readily than coarse granulated.
- Beating the whitesFour whites beaten to soft peaks, then the sugar worked in and the coconut folded through. Overbeating to stiff, dry peaks makes a mixture that will not hold together as a heap.
- Flavouring quantityNo amount is given. One teaspoon of rose water, or the grated zest of a lemon, suits this quantity; rose water varies enormously in strength, so taste the mixture before baking.
- "As thick as can be stirred"This is the working test. The mixture should hold a peaked mound on the spoon without slumping. If the coconut is very fresh and wet, add a little more sugar rather than flour.
- Paper and spacingParchment, in place of the plain paper the recipe offers. Half an inch is enough because these barely spread, but they stick badly to a bare pan.
- Yield and keepingAbout 24 to 30 drops the size of a walnut. They soften within a day; keep them in a tin with a tight lid, not in the refrigerator.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and first published in 1879, gathered contributions from a wide circle of Virginia housekeepers, which is why so many entries close with an initial rather than a name. Coconut appears often in Southern books of this period because the Atlantic ports handled a steady West Indian trade, and whole nuts travelled well; grating one by hand was a familiar, tedious kitchen chore before packaged shredded coconut became common, a development usually associated with the mid-1890s. The rose water is the older flavouring of the two offered here, a survival from eighteenth-century English confectionery that vanilla extract is generally said to have displaced, though the shift was gradual and uneven. The technique itself is macaroon technique, a beaten white bound with sugar and a ground or grated nut, adapted to whatever nut the household could get.