No. 3343

Cocoanut Crowns with Cherries

Couronnes de Noix de Coco aux Cerises

Mix together one pound of grated cocoanut, a quarter of a pound of butter, half a pound of sugar, three whole eggs and two ounces of flour; make this into a paste then leave it in the ice-box for one hour. Afterward mold this paste by hand into balls an inch in diameter lay them on a buttered and floured baking sheet, flatten them a little, egg over, place in the center a pre-served cherry and bake in a hot oven.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A short, sturdy coconut macaroon dough, chilled to firm the butter before shaping. The main adjustment is the coconut itself, which in Ranhofer's kitchen was grated from the nut and considerably moister than anything sold in a bag today.

The coconutA pound of freshly grated coconut carries a good deal of its own liquid and fat. Packaged unsweetened desiccated coconut is much drier; if you use it, expect a stiff, crumbly paste and add a spoonful or two of milk or coconut milk until the balls hold their shape. Sweetened flaked coconut will make the cakes cloying against the half pound of sugar already in the mix.
WeightsOne pound grated coconut (about 5 cups loose), 4 oz butter (1 stick), 8 oz sugar (a generous cup), three eggs, 2 oz flour (a scant half cup). The flour is a binder only, not a structure — resist adding more.
"A hot oven"Ranhofer gives no temperatures; a hot oven is conventionally read as somewhere around 400F. Coconut and sugar both colour quickly, so 400F for 10-12 minutes is a reasonable starting point: the edges should be deep gold and the centres still soft. Watch them from minute eight rather than trusting the clock.
The chilling is not optionalAn hour in the cold sets the butter so the paste can be rolled by hand without smearing. Warm dough spreads into flat wafers in the oven and loses the crown shape entirely. Work in batches and keep the reserve bowl refrigerated.
Preserved cherriesIn this period that would mean cherries candied or put up in syrup rather than fresh fruit. Drain glace cherries well and blot them; excess syrup will scorch and weld the cake to the pan.
Shaping the crownThe recipe says only to flatten the balls, egg them over and set a cherry in the centre. Pressing a shallow well with a fingertip first helps seat the cherry, which otherwise slides off as the cake spreads.
PanButtered and floured is the period method. Parchment does the same job with less risk of the sugary undersides sticking, and makes the cakes easier to lift while still warm and fragile.
YieldInch balls from this quantity of paste give a large batch of small cakes. They keep two or three days in a tin and are best the day they are baked, while the interior is still chewy.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of the kitchen he ran at Delmonico's in New York, and the tea-cake chapter is essentially the pastry department's repertoire written down: cats' tongues, croquets, and small decorated cakes meant for the tea table or as an accompaniment to ices rather than as a dessert in themselves. Couronne means crown, and the name describes nothing more than the shape — a low ring of coconut paste with a glacé cherry, a common late-nineteenth-century way of finishing a plain cake without icing. Coconut appears often in American cookbooks of this period because the fruit had become a reliable import through the Caribbean shipping trade, and grating it was ordinary kitchen work.