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Cocoanut Custard Pie
Make a common plain custard of 1 quart of milk, 6 or 8 eggs and 6 ounces of sugar, then mix in 8 to 12 ounces of grated cocoanut. Bake in crusts. Cocoanut Pie. Hotel Ordinary, 1 quart of milk. 6 ounces of sugar. 2 ounces of corn starch. 1 ounce of butter. 8 ounces of grated cocoanut. 6 eggs.
Boil the milk, mix the starch in the sugar dry and stir them in and the butter and cocoanut, and then take the mixture from the fire. Stir in the eggs after it has cooled a little. The eggs should be beaten quite light first. Sift powdered sugar over the pies after baking.
For cocoanut meringue pie make the preceding mixture with 12 yolks of eggs and take the whites to beat up for the meringue. Strew cocoanut on top before baking.
Two related fillings: a plain baked custard with coconut stirred through, and a starch-thickened "hotel" version cooked on the stove before it goes into the shell. The book assumes a professional shop hand who already knows how a custard pie behaves, so the numbers below fill in what it leaves out.
- The hinge: bake gently, stop earlyEgg custard sets around 175-180F and curdles not far above it. Bake at 425F for the first 10 minutes to set the pastry, drop to 325F, and pull the pies when the outer inch is firm and the centre still trembles; it finishes on cooling.
- Weights, not cupsAll the ounces here are weight. Six ounces of sugar is about 3/4 cup, 8 ounces of grated coconut roughly 2 1/2 to 3 cups loosely packed, 2 ounces cornstarch about 1/2 cup, 1 ounce butter 2 tablespoons. A quart of milk is 4 cups.
- Cocoanut meant freshCocoanut meant unsweetened — A trade pastry cook of this period might well crack and grate whole nuts, though commercially prepared desiccated coconut was also available by then; either way it was unsweetened. Use unsweetened desiccated or frozen grated coconut; if you use the sweetened bagged kind, cut the sugar by about a third or the pie turns cloying.
- Soggy bottomA wet custard poured into raw pastry will not crisp underneath. Blind-bake the shells until pale gold and pour the filling in while both are still warm.
- The starch version is pastry creamBoiling the milk with sugar, cornstarch and butter gives a thickened base that only needs the oven to set the eggs. Let it cool below about 140F before stirring in the beaten eggs or they scramble on contact.
- Meringue timingFor the meringue pie the twelve whites are beaten with sugar (about an ounce per white is the usual working ratio), spread to touch the crust rim all round, and browned. Note the original strews coconut on top before baking; it does not say at what stage the meringue itself is applied.
- Egg count"6 or 8 eggs" to a quart leaves the firmness to the cook. Six large eggs gives a soft, sliceable set; eight gives a firmer, more custard-square texture.
- YieldA quart of milk plus the eggs and coconut makes enough for two 9-inch pies, or three shallow shop-sized ones. Halve everything for a single pie.
Coconut pie belongs to the long American line of milk-and-egg pies that runs from colonial custard tarts through chess, buttermilk and pumpkin, all built on the same principle of setting a sweetened dairy liquid in a crust. Coconut itself became a routine bakery ingredient in the second half of the nineteenth century, when steamer traffic from the Caribbean made whole nuts cheap in eastern ports and commercially prepared desiccated coconut appeared on the market. That timing explains why the recipe reads the way it does: the author gives a "common plain" household custard first, then a "Hotel Ordinary" version stiffened with cornstarch, which holds a clean slice on a plate. The American Pastry Cook was written for the trade rather than the home, and the entry runs to three variations -- plain, hotel, meringue.