Cocoanut Pie
Mix and bake same as Cream Pie. Put Cocoanut Filling between layers and on top.
This is a cross-reference entry: the batter and method come from Cream Pie earlier in the chapter, and only the filling changes. Two things need translating — the word "pie," which here means a layer cake, and the coconut, which is not the product sold today.
- It is a cake, not a pieCream Pie in this book is a plain butter cake baked in round layers with filling between them, not a pastry in a crust. No tin size is given; two 8- or 9-inch layers are a reasonable modern choice.
- The batter you needThe recipe gives none, so you must turn to Cream Pie itself. Period one-egg cake proportions run to something like 1/4 cup butter, 1 cup sugar, 1 egg, 1/2 cup milk, about 1 1/2 cups flour and 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder, but use whatever Cream Pie your edition prints rather than a modern mix, since the crumb is meant to be firm enough to hold a wet filling.
- Oven temperatureNone is given here. "Moderate oven" in books of this date is usually read today as roughly 350-375F. Thin layers in shallow tins should need about 20 to 25 minutes; they are done when the center springs back and the edges have begun to pull from the pan.
- The coconutCocoanut in 1896 meant either freshly grated meat or the dry, unsweetened shredded coconut sold by the pound. Modern sweetened flaked coconut will make the filling cloying — buy unsweetened desiccated or shredded coconut and reduce nothing else.
- Cocoanut FillingA separate recipe elsewhere in the book. Period cocoanut fillings are typically a thickened milk custard with grated coconut stirred in. Follow the filling your edition prints; cook it until it is thick enough to mound on a spoon, then cool it completely before assembling, or it will soak the layers and run out the sides.
- AssemblingFilling between the layers and on top, as the recipe directs, which leaves the sides bare. A scatter of dry coconut over the top layer keeps the surface from looking bald.
- Yield and keepingServes six to eight in wedges. Because the filling is a milk custard, the finished cake belongs in the refrigerator and is best eaten the day it is made.
In nineteenth-century New England, a shallow round cake filled with custard was called a pie for reasons often traced to its being baked in pie plates, though the explanation is traditional rather than documented; in any case the name outlived whatever vessel prompted it. Boston Cream Pie is the survivor of that habit; Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book of 1896 still lists a whole family of them in the cake chapter, with Cream Pie as the parent recipe and Cocoanut, Chocolate and other versions defined simply by what goes between the layers. Coconut turns up constantly in American cookbooks of the 1880s and 1890s: steam shipping and commercial desiccating operations had made shredded coconut a cheap, shelf-stable grocery item, and it gave a plain one-egg cake an air of luxury for very little money.