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Cocoanut Filling
Make a boiled frosting; spread as usual; sprinkle cocoanut over the top; lay on another layer and do the same. 1 cup sugar
This is shorthand rather than a full formula — Mrs. Fryer assumes you already know her boiled frosting and gives you only the sugar quantity. Fill in the rest from standard practice.
- The recipe is incomplete as printedOnly "1 cup sugar" survives of the ingredient list; the water, egg white and coconut quantities are missing. The page assumes the reader will turn to a boiled frosting recipe given elsewhere in the book.
- What boiled frosting meansSugar and water boiled to the soft-ball stage, then poured in a thin thread into stiffly beaten egg white and beaten until it holds. For 1 cup sugar, figure roughly 1/3 cup water and 1 large egg white. It is essentially what we now call an Italian meringue frosting; it is often loosely lumped in with seven-minute frosting, which is made differently, over hot water.
- The hinge: syrup temperatureTake the syrup to about 238-240F, the soft-ball stage. Much below that and the frosting may not set firmly; taken much higher it tends to stiffen and turn grainy as you spread it. A thermometer is easier to judge than the old cold-water test.
- "Cocoanut"At the time this meant freshly grated coconut meat or the dried shredded coconut then sold by grocers. Modern sweetened flake is much sweeter and wetter; unsweetened desiccated or flaked coconut is closer to what the book intends.
- Toasting is optional and modernToasting is not called for -- The original sprinkles the coconut as it comes. Toasting it lightly in a dry pan gives more flavor, but that is a departure from the recipe.
- Work fastBoiled frosting sets as it cools. Spread the first layer, sprinkle, stack, then spread the second while the frosting in the bowl is still glossy and workable; it will not soften again once it skins over.
- YieldOne cup of sugar makes enough for two thin 8- or 9-inch layers plus a light coat on top — not enough to frost the sides generously. Double it if you want the cake fully covered.
Boiled frosting was a standard American cake finish through the second half of the nineteenth century, before buttercream became common, and coconut was a frequent partner for it once dried shredded coconut became cheap and widely distributed in the late nineteenth century — the era of the coconut layer cake. The book treats fillings as modular: one frosting recipe serves a number of variations, and a page like this exists only to record what you sprinkle on it. The archaic spelling "cocoanut" is usually explained by early confusion with "cocoa" in English printing; it persisted in American print well into the twentieth century before standardizing as "coconut."