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Lemon Cocoanut Cookies
Jessie Ray. ¼ C Crisco 1½ C sugar 1 egg 12 t lemon extract 1½ C pastry flour ½ t baking powder 14 t salt 1 C cocoanut 1/3 C milk Cream fat, add sugar, well beaten egg and flavoring. Sift the dry ingredients three times. Add them alternately with milk. Add cocoanut and mix. Drop by spoonfuls onto greased baking sheet two inches apart. Bake 15 minutes at 450 degrees.
A plain drop cookie from a church-supper collection, written in the shorthand of a cook who already knew what she was doing. Two of the small measures have lost their fractions, and the oven setting needs a second look.
- Oven temperature450F is far too hot for a soft drop cookie of this size; the coconut and sugar on the surface will scorch well before the centre sets. Drop cookies of this type bake at 375F, and 10 to 12 minutes is usually enough — watch for set edges and a pale golden bottom rather than trusting the clock.
- CriscoCrisco was a hydrogenated vegetable shortening, new enough in this period to be named rather than described. Modern shortening behaves much the same; butter will spread more and brown faster, so reduce the bake time slightly if you substitute.
- The lemon extractThe quantity as printed cannot be right for a batch this size. Half a teaspoon of lemon extract is the usual proportion for about a cup and a half of flour; more than a teaspoon turns medicinal.
- The saltThe salt figure has likewise lost its fraction. A quarter teaspoon is standard for this quantity of flour, and if you are using salted butter in place of shortening you can leave it out.
- Sugar to fat ratioA quarter cup of fat against a cup and a half of sugar is a high proportion of sugar, and is likely to give a thin, crisp, very sweet cookie that spreads. If you prefer a softer cookie, three-quarters of a cup of sugar is closer to modern practice.
- CocoanutRead this as desiccated or shredded coconut of the packaged sort, which may have been sweetened or unsweetened. Sweetened flaked coconut will push an already sweet dough further; if that is all you have, cut the sugar.
- Pastry flourPastry flour is lower in protein than all-purpose. Use a cake-and-pastry blend, or approximate it by cutting all-purpose flour with cake flour, for the tender crumb intended.
- Sifting three timesThis was how cooks aerated flour and distributed a coarse baking powder evenly before pre-sifted flour existed. One thorough whisking of the dry ingredients does the same job now.
- YieldExpect roughly three dozen small cookies. Two inches apart is the minimum given how much this dough spreads; give them more room on the sheet.
Community cookbooks of this kind, sold to raise money by clubs and congregations, are among the useful records of what American home baking looked like in the early twentieth century — not the polished prose of a cooking-school manual but the working shorthand of individual cooks, each recipe signed with a name. The naming of Crisco places the entry after its launch in 1911; by the 1920s it had made considerable inroads against lard in cake and cookie recipes, helped by vigorous advertising and by its keeping qualities. Desiccated coconut likewise reached kitchens as a shelf-stable packaged good, and the pairing of coconut with lemon extract suits the period's fondness for bright bottled flavourings. The older spelling "cocoanut" persisted in print well into the twentieth century.