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Cocoanut Pudding
When the preceding pudding is just finished, add half a cocoanut grated; put it into a mold. Serve with whipped cream around it, or a sauce of boiled custard made with the yolks of the eggs. As only half of a cocoanut is used for this pudding, sprinkle sugar on the other half and spread it on something, when it will keep a month.
This is a variation note rather than a standalone recipe: it assumes the pudding immediately preceding it in the book, almost certainly a cornstarch or gelatine blancmange-type pudding thickened with egg whites, leaving the yolks for the sauce. A few points make it workable on its own.
- Half a cocoanutA mature coconut yields roughly 3 to 4 cups of grated meat, so half is about 1 1/2 to 2 cups, loosely packed. Unsweetened frozen or desiccated coconut substitutes directly; if using dried, soak it briefly in warm milk so it does not draw moisture out of the pudding.
- Fold, do not stirIf the base pudding is lightened with beaten whites, add the coconut last and fold it in. Grated coconut is heavy and will sink and deflate the mixture if worked in vigorously.
- The moldRinse the mold with cold water and leave it wet, or brush it very lightly with a neutral oil, before filling. A wet mold releases a set pudding cleanly; a dry one does not. Chill at least four hours, and dip the mold in hot water for a few seconds to turn it out.
- Boiled custard is not boiledThe sauce is a stirred custard, and the name is misleading. Cook the yolks with milk and sugar over low heat or a water bath, stirring constantly, until it coats the back of a spoon, around 170 to 175F. Past about 185F the yolks scramble and the sauce breaks.
- Yolk quantityThe original assumes you have whatever yolks the preceding pudding left over. As a working ratio, 4 to 5 yolks to 2 cups of milk with 1/3 cup sugar gives a pouring custard of the right thickness.
- Ignore the keeping adviceThe keeping advice is optimistic. Sugaring the coconut and spreading it out does dry it and will extend its life somewhat, but fresh grated coconut is high in moisture and oil and can mold or turn rancid well short of a month. Refrigerate leftover fresh coconut for a few days, or freeze it.
- YieldAssuming a standard quart-sized pudding base, this serves six to eight, with the custard sauce poured around rather than over the turned-out mold.
The spelling cocoanut was standard in English and American cookbooks through most of the nineteenth century, commonly explained by a confusion with cocoa; it persisted in print well past 1900. Coconut desserts became common in American home cooking as shipping brought whole nuts north from the Caribbean in quantity, and cracking, draining and grating a fresh coconut was ordinary domestic labor. Commercially shredded coconut appeared in the later nineteenth century — the Philadelphia firm of Franklin Baker is the best-known example, from the mid-1890s — but recipes like this one still assume the cook is working from the nut itself, which is why the author bothers to explain what to do with the unused half. The construction also shows a habit of building recipes in chains: one pudding uses the whites, the sauce uses the yolks.