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Corn-Flour Pudding
Boil a pint of milk with a little lemon-rind; pour it upon three dessert-spoonfuls of corn-flour mixed smoothly with a little cold milk or water, add a well-beaten egg, and sweeten according to taste. Pour the mixture into a well-buttered pie-dish, and bake it from twenty to thirty minutes. Probable cost, 5d. Sufficient for three persons.
A plain baked milk pudding of the nursery sort, thickened with cornstarch rather than rice or semolina. The whole thing turns on the order of operations: slurry first, boiling milk poured onto it, egg last and off the heat.
- Corn-flour is cornstarchIn British usage corn-flour means what Americans call cornstarch, not fine-milled maize meal. Masa harina or cornmeal will not work here.
- Dessert-spoonfulsA dessert-spoon sits between a teaspoon and a tablespoon, roughly 2 teaspoons or 10 ml. Three of them come to about 2 tablespoons of cornstarch, which is right for a pint of milk in a soft, spoonable pudding.
- The pintCassell's is British, so this is an imperial pint of 20 fluid ounces, about 2 1/2 US cups or 570 ml. Using a 16 oz US pint gives a noticeably stiffer set.
- Lemon-rindPare the zest off in strips with a peeler, avoiding the white pith, and fish the strips out before the milk goes onto the slurry. Grated zest left in the pudding turns bitter and speckled.
- The eggLet the thickened milk stand a minute or two before beating in the egg, and add it in a thin stream while whisking. Straight into scalding milk it curdles, and the baked pudding sets grainy.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given; Victorian books of this kind left oven heat to the cook's judgement. A moderate oven, around 350F (180C), suits it; the surface should be lightly set and just colouring at the edges after 20 to 30 minutes.
- SweeteningThe recipe leaves this open; a couple of tablespoons of sugar for this quantity is a reasonable starting point, stirred into the hot milk so it dissolves. Puddings of this plain sort were often served with jam or stewed fruit alongside.
- Yield and costSufficient for three persons, as stated. The 5d costing is a Victorian retail estimate and is of historical interest only.
Cornstarch reached British kitchens in quantity in the middle of the nineteenth century, when refiners began selling it as a cheap domestic thickener; the Paisley firm of Brown & Polson is the name most often associated with its rise as a household staple. Before that, a smooth white pudding of this kind generally meant arrowroot, imported and expensive, so corn-flour puddings offered a cheaper substitute. This is food for children and invalids, flavoured with nothing more costly than a strip of lemon peel.