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Snow Pudding with Custard
Mix 2 tablespoons arrowroot with 3 tablespoons cold milk. Boil 1 cup milk then pour it on to mixed arrowroot, pour back into pan and boil gently for 8 minutes, stirring all the time, then allow to cool. Stir in yolks of 2 eggs, 2 tablespoons Crisco, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 3 tablespoons sugar, pour into Criscoed pudding dish; beat whites of eggs to a stiff froth and mix lightly in. Dust nutmeg over top and bake in moderate oven 10 minutes. Serve quickly with custard.
This is a small baked soufflé in all but name, and it behaves like one: it rises in the oven and falls on the way to the table. Everything about the method is arranged around getting it eaten fast.
- Serve it the moment it leaves the oven"Serve quickly" is the hinge of the recipe. The whites are the only leavening, and the arrowroot base gives them little structure to hold on to, so the pudding begins sinking within a minute or two of coming out.
- Moderate ovenRoughly 350-375F. Ten minutes at that heat sets the surface and puffs the whites without cooking the interior firm — the result should be barely set and creamy under the crust, not sliced like a baked custard.
- CriscoThe book was published to promote it. Crisco in 1915 was hydrogenated cottonseed oil; today's product is reformulated and contains palm and soybean oils. Any solid vegetable shortening works, and unsalted butter gives a better flavour here — 2 tablespoons is 1 oz. "Criscoed pudding dish" simply means greased.
- ArrowrootStill sold, and not simply interchangeable measure-for-measure with cornstarch. Arrowroot sets clear and slightly glossy and loses thickening power if boiled hard or held long, which is why the recipe says boil gently and stir constantly.
- Cool the base before the yolksSkipping this scrambles the yolks in the hot starch. Cool to lukewarm, stir them in, then fold the whites through in two additions — "mix lightly" means fold, not beat.
- Dish and yieldUse a shallow greased dish of about a quart, or four individual ramekins; a deep dish will not cook through in ten minutes. Serves four modestly.
- The custardNo recipe is given here. A plain pouring custard suits it: about 2 egg yolks and 1 tablespoon sugar to a cup of milk, stirred over low heat until it coats the spoon, and not allowed to boil. Make it before the pudding goes into the oven.
A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil and published by Procter & Gamble in the mid-1910s to demonstrate the uses of Crisco, then a very new product; that is why shortening turns up in a delicate egg pudding at all. The name is slightly misleading by the standards of the period: nineteenth-century "snow pudding" was usually a cold dish of gelatin whipped with egg whites and served with boiled custard, and the pairing with custard here may perhaps be a survival of that older convention. What Neil actually gives is a hot arrowroot soufflé, which places it in the family of nursery and invalid puddings: arrowroot was long regarded as the gentlest of the starches and appears constantly in Victorian and Edwardian cookery aimed at children and convalescents.