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Orange Pudding
Two large oranges pared and cut in pieces one inch square, put in bottom of pudding dish, pour over them one cup white sugar, then make a plain corn starch pudding without sugar, and pour it over the orange and sugar. Let stand and cool.
This is a layered cold pudding rather than a baked one, and it leans on a cornstarch blancmange the 1877 cook was assumed to know by heart. Two things need filling in: the pudding itself and the fact that modern oranges are far sweeter than the ones this cup of sugar was meant to fix.
- The cornstarch pudding, unstatedThe recipe assumes you know it. A workable plain version is about 1 quart milk thickened with 4 to 5 tablespoons cornstarch and a pinch of salt, slaked in a little cold milk first, then cooked over low heat until it coats a spoon heavily. Here it is made without sugar because the sugar is all in the fruit layer.
- Cook the starch outCornstarch needs to reach a full bubbling simmer for a minute or two after it thickens, or the finished pudding tastes chalky and may thin again as it sits. Stir constantly at that stage; the bottom scorches quickly in milk.
- Sugar, reducedA cup of white sugar over two oranges is a lot by modern taste, and market oranges today are generally sweeter than what this was written for. Half a cup is closer to right, and the syrup that forms will still be plentiful.
- Prepare the oranges properly"Pared" here means the peel and the white pith taken off entirely; leave the pith and the whole dish turns bitter. Cut over a bowl and add the juice, and slice out the tough central membrane on thick-skinned winter fruit.
- Pour hot, but not boiling-hotThe hot pudding should go over the fruit while still pourable so it settles into an even layer, but let it lose its fiercest heat for a minute so it does not cook the orange to mush. Do not stir the layers together.
- "Let stand and cool" means chill"Let stand and cool" -- in a modern kitchen this means the refrigerator: two hours at minimum, four is better. The starch sets firm as it cools and the sugar draws a clear syrup out of the oranges in the meantime.
- Vessel and yieldA glass dish shows the two layers off; on the quantities above you will need a full 1.5 to 2 quarts of capacity. This serves six to eight, spooned out so each portion gets fruit and syrup from the bottom.
Cornstarch reached American kitchens as a cheap, reliable thickener in the middle of the nineteenth century, and by the 1870s a "plain corn starch pudding" was treated in household cookbooks as a default needing no recipe of its own — the same way a modern book assumes you can make a vinaigrette. What makes this version worth noticing is the fruit: fresh oranges in an Ohio winter meant rail freight from Florida or the Mediterranean, and a dish that put two of them on the table whole rather than as a flavoring was quietly showing off. The technique of burying cut fruit under sugar and letting a bland starch pudding set over it fills much the same slot as the trifles and gelatin desserts of the period, and it needs no oven at all — a real consideration in a kitchen where the range was fired with wood or coal.