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Cocoanut Biscuits
1/2 pound desiccated cocoanut 2 ounces sugar 3 ounces ground rice Whites of 3 eggs Mix well together the cocoanut, sugar and ground rice. Whip the whites of eggs to a stiff froth, and add to the other ingredients, a little at a time, until it is well mixed. Then put about a tablespoon on a well greased baking tin, in very rough shaped heaps. Bake in a quick oven for five minutes, then let the oven cool, and cook slowly for half an hour. They should be a golden brown.
A British-style coconut macaroon built on three egg whites and no butter. The two-stage bake is the whole method: a short blast to set and colour the outside, then a long dry-out at low heat.
- The two ovensPeriod tables put a "quick" oven at roughly 400-425F and a "slow" one at about 300F. Since domestic ovens cool slowly, it is easier to bake five minutes at the higher heat, then open the door for a minute and drop the setting to 300F for the remaining half hour.
- Ground riceMilled rice, slightly coarser than modern rice flour. It absorbs moisture and helps keep the biscuits from spreading; cornstarch is not a good substitute, as it will not give the same slight grit and body.
- Desiccated cocoanutPeriod desiccated coconut was unsweetened and finely shredded. Buy unsweetened fine desiccated coconut, not the sweetened flaked kind sold for cake topping, or the biscuits will be cloying and will scorch in the first five minutes.
- Only 2 ounces of sugarThat is roughly a quarter cup to half a pound of coconut, which makes a dry, plain biscuit by modern standards. It is not an error, but it is a fraction of what a contemporary macaroon carries.
- Folding the whitesAdd the whipped whites to the dry mix in stages, as directed, and stop when the mixture just coheres into a stiff, sticky mass. Beating it smooth collapses the foam and the heaps will slump flat.
- Greasing the tinA well-greased sheet was what the period cook had; parchment paper is more reliable, since egg-white and sugar mixtures tend to stick fast to metal as they cool.
- Rough heapsThe craggy surface is called for deliberately; the projecting shreds catch the initial high heat and colour first.
- YieldA tablespoon each should give somewhere in the region of two dozen biscuits, depending on how heaped the spoonfuls are. They keep in a tin for several days and firm up further as they cool.
Leftover egg whites were a standing problem in kitchens that used yolks freely for custards, mayonnaise, sauces and enriched pastry. Rather than waste them, cookery writers collected whole sections of meringues, icings and macaroon-type biscuits. Coconut had become a cheap store-cupboard item by the late nineteenth century, once desiccating and shipping it dried made it available far from where it grew, and it took easily to the almond-macaroon formula of nut, sugar and egg white. Ground rice, used here for structure, was another Victorian staple, sold alongside sago and tapioca for puddings and cheap baking. The recipe needs no meat stock, suet or lard, which is more than could be said for a good deal of Edwardian baking.