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Cocoanut Drops (One pound of grated cocoanut)
One pound of grated cocoanut, white of three eggs, three-quarters of a pound of sugar, beat light and drop on buttered tins; bake.
A three-ingredient macaroon, written for a cook who already knew what a coconut drop should look like. The gaps worth filling are the oven (none is given) and the kind of coconut intended.
- The coconut"Grated cocoanut" means fresh meat taken from the shell and grated, which is moister and denser than the dried product — a pound is roughly 4 to 5 cups. Modern dried desiccated or shredded coconut is drier and lighter, about 5 to 6 cups to the pound; if you use it, expect a stiffer, sandier mixture, and use unsweetened, since the sugar here is already generous.
- Weights into cupsThree-quarters of a pound of granulated sugar is about 1 2/3 cups. Whites of three large eggs come to roughly 1/3 cup (3 fl oz).
- "Beat light"Beat the whites to soft, glossy peaks, then fold in the sugar and coconut rather than beating everything together — the air is the only leavening in the recipe. The mixture can also be made meringue-fashion, beating the sugar into the whites first, which gives a crisper drop.
- The missing ovenNo temperature is given because none could be. These want a slow to moderate oven, 300–325F, for 20 to 25 minutes, until set and just colouring at the tips. Anything hotter browns the exposed coconut shreds before the centres firm.
- Buttered tinsButter alone leaves these very prone to sticking and to spreading at the edges. Parchment on a heavy sheet is a straight improvement and needs no fat at all.
- ShapingThe mixture should hold a peak. Drop in rounded teaspoonfuls, well spaced but pressed upward into cones rather than flattened — they barely spread.
- Yield and keepingThirty to thirty-six only if dropped large; in rounded teaspoonfuls this quantity of mixture will give considerably more. They are best the day they are made; in a tin they soften within a day or two.
Coconut drops belong to the wider family of egg-white macaroons found on the sweet-biscuit pages of late nineteenth-century American cookbooks — mixtures of a nut or nut-like meat, sugar and whipped white, needing no butter, no flour and no chemical leavening. Their appearance in a general household book reflects the arrival of cheap imported coconuts in American cities: over the later nineteenth century whole nuts are generally said to have become a common urban grocery item, with commercially shredded packaged coconut following after. Recipes of this kind are written in the older style, by the pound and without oven temperatures, because a cook working a wood or coal range judged heat by hand and by how quickly a scrap of paper coloured; the terse instruction to simply "bake" assumes that skill rather than omitting it.