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Cocoanut Macaroons
Make the white icing or meringue paste as directed for meringue puffs and add to it when finished 8 ounces of desiccated cocoanut. Drop pieces size of walnuts with a spoon and knife point, on greased baking pans and bake in a very slack oven. These favorites for the cake baskets. The sugared kind of desiccated cocoanut is the best to use. Care should be taken to have the icing well made and firm before adding it, for no additions of flour or starch will do any good if the icing is inclined to run in the first place. And too much care cannot be taken with the baking. Let the macaroons remain on the pans till cold.
A two-ingredient meringue cookie whose success rests entirely on the meringue itself. The book assumes you have already made the "white icing or meringue paste" from the meringue puffs recipe: egg whites whipped stiff with sugar, roughly 1 cup of sugar to every 3-4 whites, beaten until it holds a firm peak and looks glossy.
- The hinge: a firm meringueThe text is emphatic about it. If the whites are underbeaten or the sugar has not dissolved, the mounds spread into flat sheets in the oven, and no flour or cornstarch will rescue them -- the recipe says so outright. Beat to stiff, glossy peaks that stand upright on the whisk, and rub a little between your fingers to check the sugar has gone grainless.
- "Very slack oven"The slackest setting in a period range, around 250F, perhaps 275F. These are dried rather than baked, so expect a long spell in the oven, until the outsides are set and dry and the bottoms lift cleanly.
- Desiccated cocoanutNineteenth-century desiccated coconut is finely shredded and dried, much drier and finer than the moist sweetened flake sold in bags today. Sweetened flake works, but chop or pulse it shorter so the mounds hold together; unsweetened fine macaroon coconut is the closer match, though the cookies will be less sweet.
- 8 ouncesA weight, not a volume. Eight ounces of fine desiccated coconut is roughly 2 1/2 to 3 cups loosely packed; weigh it if you can, since flake and fine shred measure very differently by cup.
- Greased pansParchment or a silicone mat is more reliable than grease for meringue, which sticks stubbornly. If you do grease, dust lightly with flour or use a nonstick pan.
- Size and yield"Size of walnuts" means shelled walnuts, mounds of about 1 tablespoon. The recipe gives no egg count, so yield depends on how much meringue you make to carry the 8 ounces of coconut; expect a large batch.
- Cooling on the panNot a throwaway line. Warm meringue is soft and tears; left until fully cold, the base firms and releases. Store airtight the same day, as they soften quickly in humid air.
Macaroons began as almond-and-egg-white confections in Italy and France, and the coconut version took hold in Anglo-American baking through the nineteenth century as desiccated coconut became a cheap, shelf-stable commodity shipped from Ceylon and the Caribbean. Before drying and shredding were industrialized, a cook had to crack and grate the nut herself; by the time this book was written a pastry shop could presumably buy it ready-prepared, sweetened or plain. The author's aside that these are "favorites for the cake baskets" is often read as pointing toward the commercial bakery: cake baskets are generally understood to have been the assorted trays of small cakes and fancies sold by weight or set out for tea, and coconut macaroons may well have earned their place there by being cheap, keeping reasonably well, and offering a use for egg whites in a kitchen that spent its yolks on custards and rich doughs.