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Cocoanut Pie (II)
Mrs. Thomas.
Grate fresh cocoanut ; to one cup of cocoanut add one and one-half cups of sweet milk, the yolks of four eggs, a little salt, and sweeten to taste; one tablespoon of melted butter; beat the whole five or six minutes; beat the whites of the eggs to a stiff froth, and put over the top just long enough to slightly brown before taking the pie from the oven. If you use desiccated cocoanut soak it in the milk over night.
A single-crust custard pie with a meringue top, written for cooks who assumed a pastry shell and a wood-fired oven without being told. The proportions make one 9-inch pie.
- The crust is assumedMrs. Thomas gives no pastry, the shell being taken for granted in a book of this kind. Line a 9-inch plate with a single crust and blind-bake it partway; the custard is thin enough that an unbaked bottom may stay soggy.
- Fresh cocoanutA whole coconut yields roughly 3 to 4 cups grated, so one cup is a quarter of a nut. Unsweetened frozen grated coconut is the closest substitute; sweetened flaked coconut will make the pie cloying unless you cut the added sugar sharply.
- Desiccated cocoanut and the overnight soakNineteenth-century desiccated coconut was very dry and would rob the custard of liquid. The overnight soak in the milk is not optional if you use it; the recipe does not say where to stand it, but do it in the refrigerator.
- Sweeten to tasteFor this quantity of custard, half a cup to two-thirds of a cup of sugar is the usual range. Taste the unbaked mixture, keeping in mind that the meringue adds sweetness of its own.
- Sweet milkSimply milk that has not soured, as opposed to the buttermilk and clabber also kept in the kitchen. Whole milk is right here; skim gives a watery set.
- Oven temperatureNo temperature is given. Bake the filled shell at 325 to 350F until the custard is set at the edge and still slightly loose at the centre, roughly 35 to 45 minutes; the residual heat finishes it.
- The five or six minutes of beatingThat instruction dates from hand whisks and does not need repeating with a mixer. A minute is enough, and over-beating whips air into the custard that will puff and then collapse.
- The meringueBeat the four whites stiff with two to four tablespoons of sugar (more if you like a sweeter, more stable froth), spread to the crust edge so it seals, and return to the oven only long enough to colour, five to eight minutes, as the recipe directs. Longer risks a weeping meringue and an over-set custard.
Coconut turns up constantly in American cookbooks of the 1870s and 80s because the trade in whole nuts from the Caribbean had become cheap and steady, and commercial desiccated coconut reached American grocers somewhat later, in the 1880s and 90s, with Schepp's and then Franklin Baker. The recipe's aside about soaking the desiccated kind overnight catches that transition exactly: the fresh nut is still the standard, and the packaged product is the novelty needing a workaround. Structurally the pie is an old form, a boiled-custard-in-a-shell of the sort English cookery had made with almonds for centuries, with coconut standing in for the more expensive nut. The Home Cook Book was compiled from contributions by named housewives, which is why this one carries Mrs. Thomas's name and why it reads like a note passed between neighbours rather than a tested formula, with the crust, the oven and the baking time all left to the reader's judgment.