Home › Our Susan's Opinion of a Kitchen › Cocoanut Pudding
Cocoanut Pudding
G. A. Tinkham.
One quart sweet milk, ten tablespoons grated cocoanut, one cup powdered sugar, and whites of ten eggs; bake one hour, evenly and slowly; to be served cold, with sugar and cream
A baked white custard, thickened entirely with egg whites, so the whole thing hinges on gentle heat. The original's "evenly and slowly" is the instruction that matters most.
- Bake it in a water bathTen whites in a quart of milk sets into a delicate curd that will weep and turn spongy over direct heat. The recipe gives no vessel or temperature, only "evenly and slowly"; setting the dish in a pan of hot water and holding the oven around 300–325F is a reasonable modern reading of that.
- Doneness, not timeOne hour is a starting point for a deep dish. Pull it when the edges are set and the centre still trembles slightly, or at 170–175F on a thermometer; residual heat finishes it, and a fully firm centre means it has gone too far.
- "Sweet milk"Plain fresh milk, specified to distinguish it from sour milk or buttermilk, both of which period recipes also call for. Use whole milk.
- Powdered sugarIn books of this period this usually means granulated sugar ground fine, not modern confectioners' sugar with its cornstarch. Ordinary granulated sugar dissolves perfectly well in the milk and is the closer match.
- CocoanutFreshly grated coconut meat, unsweetened. Ten tablespoons is a generous half cup plus two; if you substitute packaged sweetened flake, cut the cup of sugar back or the pudding will be cloying.
- Ten egg whitesRoughly 1 1/4 cups, or about 10 fluid ounces. The recipe is silent on whether they are beaten; stirring them in rather than whipping to a meringue gives the smoother custard, since beaten air tends to produce a foamy, layered result.
- Yield and servingA quart of milk plus the whites fills a 2-quart dish and serves eight. It is meant to be thoroughly chilled before serving, with sugar and pouring cream at the table; warm, it tastes flat and thin.
Puddings built on egg whites alone are often said to have been a practical answer to a common nineteenth-century surplus: yolks went into cakes, sauces, salad dressings and ice creams, leaving cooks with bowls of whites and no refrigeration to keep them. A white custard, a snow pudding, an angel cake or a meringue all served the same thrifty purpose. Coconut was the luxury note here uts reached northern American cities regularly through the Caribbean trade, and grating one by hand was tedious enough that the ingredient signalled a dish made for company. The Home Cook Book, first published in Chicago in 1874 and compiled from contributions by named local women and households, is a fair record of what such a household actually served, credit line and all.