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Grated Cocoanut Pudding
1 large cocoanut Clear strawberry or currant jelly Take a large cocoanut, break in pieces, pare off the outside bark. Throw the pieces into cold water, then dry them with a cloth and grate on a coarse grater, heap it on a flat dish, and serve with any good preserve; or arrange it around a jelly flavored with raspberry or strawberry.
A two-ingredient dessert that lives or dies on the coconut. The whole point is fresh grated flesh, sweet and still moist, so nothing about it works with the dried sweetened shreds sold in bags.
- Choosing the nutPick a coconut that is heavy for its size and sloshes audibly when shaken; no liquid means it has dried out or spoiled. The three eyes should be dry and free of mould.
- Opening itPierce two eyes with a skewer or screwdriver and drain the water, then tap the nut firmly around its equator with the back of a heavy knife or a hammer until it splits. Baking the drained nut at 350F for 12-15 minutes makes the shell crack away from the flesh more willingly.
- "Bark" means the brown skin"Bark" most likely means the brown skin -- after the hard shell comes off, the flesh still wears a thin brown seed coat. Pare it away with a vegetable peeler or paring knife; left on, it gives the grated pudding a greyer look.
- The cold water soakDropping the pared pieces in cold water presumably rinses off shell dust and cools the flesh. The recipe is explicit that they should then be dried with a cloth.
- GratingA coarse box grater or the coarse shredding disc of a food processor both work; a Microplane turns it to pulp. Fresh coconut oxidises and dries within a few hours, so grate it shortly before serving.
- "Jelly" hereClear currant, strawberry or raspberry jelly supplies the sweetness; no sugar is added to the coconut. The recipe gives two options: heap the coconut on a flat dish with any good preserve, or arrange it around a jelly.
- YieldA large coconut gives roughly 3 to 4 cups grated, enough for four to six as part of a dessert course. Serve cold but not straight from the refrigerator; chilling dulls the coconut's flavour.
The coconut arrived whole and shelf-stable from the tropics and kept for some time in a cool larder. This is one of the plainest possible uses -- no baking, no custard, no gelatine, just fresh flesh grated and heaped against a jelly, in the manner of the "cold desserts" that closed a Victorian meal. The instruction to pare off the "bark" is a reminder that the reader was expected to handle a whole nut as a matter of routine; commercially dried and shredded coconut existed by this period.