Home › Doughnuts and Gingerbread › Cocoanut Drops
Cocoanut Drops
One-half pound of grated cocoanut; onehalf pound of powdered sugar; whites of four eggs. Beat the eggs and sugar until light and white, then add the lemon, and as
The text breaks off mid-sentence, so what survives is an ingredient list and the first step. The proportions are standard for a meringue-bound coconut drop and the rest can be inferred from period practice, but note what is missing before you begin.
- The recipe is incompleteIt stops at "and as", presumably before an instruction to add the cocoanut, followed by dropping and baking directions. Nothing after the mixing stage survives on this page.
- The phantom lemon"Add the lemon" refers to an ingredient the list never gives. It was most likely the rind, used as flavouring rather than as liquid.
- Powdered sugarIn period usage this generally meant granulated sugar ground fine, not the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold today. Superfine (caster) sugar is the closer match and dissolves properly into the whites.
- Grated cocoanutHalf a pound of freshly grated coconut is roughly three loosely packed cups and carries a good deal of moisture. Dried unsweetened shredded coconut is much drier and will absorb more of the meringue, giving a stiffer drop.
- Beating the whites"Beat the eggs and sugar until light and white" means whipping the four whites to soft peaks and adding the sugar gradually until the mixture holds a glossy peak. Fold the coconut in by hand; stirring it in with the beater knocks out the air the drops rely on.
- OvenThe baking directions are lost with the rest of the text. Drops of this kind suit a slow oven, around 300F, on buttered paper or a lined sheet for 20 to 25 minutes, set and only faintly coloured at the edges.
- YieldDropped by the heaped teaspoon, this quantity makes several dozen small cakes.
Coconut drops belong to the large family of nineteenth-century meringue confections — macaroons, kisses, almond drops — that used stiffly beaten egg whites and sugar as the only binder, with no flour and no chemical leavening. Coconut itself had become an everyday grocery item in the United States by the 1890s: shredded, dried, packaged coconut was widely sold, though books like this one still assumed a cook might grate the fresh nut herself. Recipes calling for four egg whites may point to a kitchen where yolks were being used elsewhere — in custards, sauces or gold cake — an economy often said to have shaped a great many Victorian sweets.