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Cocoanut Pudding
Grate cocoanut, then stew it slowly in one quart of milk; pour this on a half loaf of baker's bread; when cool add one pound of sugar, and one-half pound of butter, beaten to a cream; then add six eggs and bake.
A bread pudding in the older mold: enormously rich, sweetened at a rate few modern palates want, and written for a cook who already knew how long a pudding sits in the oven. The proportions need reading before you begin.
- How much coconutThe recipe gives no quantity; it most likely assumes the one nut you bought, which grates down to roughly 3 to 4 cups of fresh meat. Unsweetened frozen grated coconut or dried unsweetened flakes work; sweetened flake will push an already sweet pudding past edible.
- Half a loaf of baker's breadA commercial loaf of the period commonly ran to a pound, which would make this roughly 8 oz of bread, or about 4 to 5 cups torn into pieces; loaf weights varied, so judge by weight rather than by half a modern loaf. Use a plain white loaf a day or two old; enriched sandwich bread turns to paste.
- Steeping the coconut"Stew it slowly" means a bare simmer for 15 to 20 minutes so the milk takes on the coconut, not a boil that scorches the milk solids. Pour it hot over the bread and let it stand until the bread has fully collapsed.
- Cut the sugarA pound of sugar is about 2¼ cups against a quart of milk. Two-thirds to half that amount gives a pudding that still reads as sweet. The butter, a full cup, can be reduced to half without harming the set.
- Eggs and temperatureBeat the six eggs and add them only once the bread mixture is genuinely cool to the touch, or they will scramble in streaks. Whisk them in thoroughly rather than folding.
- Oven and timeBake at 350F in a buttered dish of at least 3 quarts (the batter is bulky) for 50 to 70 minutes, until the center is set with only a slight wobble and a knife inserted an inch from the middle comes out clean. A pan of hot water on the rack below moderates the heat and keeps the edges from curdling.
- Yield and servingThis makes 10 to 12 servings. Puddings of this kind were often served warm with a hard sauce or a thin wine sauce; given the sugar, unsweetened cream is the better companion.
Coconut arrived in nineteenth-century American kitchens as a whole nut sold at the grocer, to be pierced, drained and grated by hand, which may be why so many recipes of the era begin with the flat instruction "grate cocoanut" and give no quantity: you used the one you bought. The dish itself belongs to the long family of bread puddings, the standard means of turning stale baker's loaf into a company dessert, and the older spelling "cocoanut" — usually explained as a conflation with "cocoa" — persisted in American cookbooks well into the twentieth century before settling as "coconut." The pound of sugar and half pound of butter mark it as a Sunday or holiday pudding rather than an everyday one.