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Sponge Cocoanut Pudding
Season soft custard with two tablespoons wine. Arrange in layers one dozen macaroons, one dozen lady fingers and one dozen cocoanut cakes.
Cover with soft custard and sprinkle with grated cocoanut. 8 apples 3 egg yolks 1/4 cup sugar
This is an assembled dessert rather than a cooked one: a trifle built from bought bakery goods and a stirred custard. Most of the work is in the custard, and the ingredient list printed at the end does not belong to it.
- The stray ingredient listThe line "8 apples 3 egg yolks 1/4 cup sugar" appears to be stray text belonging to another recipe — there are no apples anywhere in the method. Ignore it; nothing in this pudding is apple-based.
- Soft custardIn books of this period "soft custard" means a stirred boiled custard: roughly 2 cups scalded milk, 4 egg yolks or 2 whole eggs, 1/4 cup sugar and a pinch of salt, cooked over hot water until it coats a spoon. Take it off the heat at about 175-180F; much past that and it curdles.
- Cocoanut cakesThese are coconut macaroons — small drop cakes of shredded coconut, sugar and egg white. Macaroons proper, listed separately, were almond. Both are still sold, so the layers can be bought as written.
- Grated cocoanutIn 1907 this meant fresh coconut grated from the shell, or dried unsweetened shred. Modern sweetened flaked coconut makes the top cloying against an already sweet base; unsweetened is closer to the original.
- The wineThe recipe specifies only "wine"; a sherry or Madeira suits it. Stir it in once the custard has cooled slightly, as adding it to hot custard drives off some of the aroma.
- Soaking timeThe recipe gives none, but the dry cakes need it. Chill at least four hours, preferably overnight, so the ladyfingers and macaroons soften into the custard rather than sitting in it.
- Vessel and yieldA 2-quart glass bowl or deep dish should hold three dozen small cakes with custard between the layers; reckon on roughly 8 to 10 servings.
This is a trifle under an American name — the English original, with its sponge, wine and pouring custard, was well established by the eighteenth century. What is notable is that the solid components are all bakery goods the cook is assumed to buy rather than bake. Lowney's Cook Book was published by the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate manufacturer, and carries a full complement of ordinary household recipes alongside the chocolate ones. Coconut appears constantly in desserts of these years, the shredded and dried product having become cheap and widely available in American groceries during the last decades of the nineteenth century.