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Cocoanut Cornstarch Pudding
One quart of milk, one piece of butter size of a walnut, yolks of two eggs well beaten, two tablespoons of cornstarch, one-half cup of sugar. Put milk and butter in double boiler; beat yolks of eggs, add sugar, dissolve cornstarch in a little milk, add all to milk in double boiler, and cook until it thickens; add one-half teaspoon of salt, and one-half cup of cocoanut. When thick, remove from fire, cover with beaten whites of two eggs, to which two tablespoons of confectioner's sugar has been added. Sprinkle cocoanut over the top, and brown in the oven. Flavor with one teaspoon of lemon extract.
— Mrs. Amelia E. Whittaker
A stovetop cornstarch pudding with a meringue top, of the sort that filled the dessert pages of every church and village cookbook around 1900. The method is sound; only the proportions and the coconut need translating.
- The thickener is lightTwo tablespoons of cornstarch to a quart of milk gives a soft, spoonable pudding closer to a pouring custard than a moulded one. Modern recipes generally use considerably more, on the order of four to six tablespoons per quart, if you want it to hold a shape.
- Cook it outCornstarch needs to reach a full simmer to lose its raw taste and set properly, which is slow in a double boiler. Stir constantly and give it several minutes after it visibly thickens; the water bath makes the yolks much less likely to curdle, though they still can if the pan is left unstirred.
- Butter the size of a walnutAbout one tablespoon. Shelled walnut, not in the shell.
- CocoanutThis could mean freshly grated coconut or the dried, shredded product then widely sold, which came both sweetened and unsweetened. Most supermarket coconut today is sweetened and moist; use unsweetened flake, or reduce the half cup of sugar if sweetened is all you have.
- The saltHalf a teaspoon in a sweet pudding is on the high side by modern taste but not an error; salt sharpens a bland milk base. A quarter teaspoon suits most palates now.
- Add the flavoring lastThe recipe lists the lemon extract at the end, and that is where it belongs. Alcohol-based extracts lose their aroma in a hot pot; stir it in off the heat.
- Browning the meringueTwo whites with two tablespoons of confectioner's sugar makes a thin, soft meringue. Spread it to the edges of the dish so it seals, and brown at 400F for about 8 minutes, or under a broiler for a minute or two with the door watched. A soft meringue browned this briefly does not reach a pasteurizing temperature throughout, which is worth knowing if you are serving anyone who avoids undercooked egg.
- YieldA quart of milk makes roughly six servings. Serve warm or chilled; the meringue weeps if it sits overnight in the refrigerator.
Cornstarch puddings became a household staple after commercial corn starch was manufactured on a large scale in the United States from the 1840s and 1850s onward, marketed as a cheap, reliable substitute for the arrowroot that had thickened earlier blancmanges. By the time this Catskill collection was assembled, versions were commonplace \— plain, chocolate, lemon, or, as here, coconut. Dried coconut was a genuine novelty turned commonplace in the same decades: shredded and desiccated coconut was being packaged and sold by American firms from the 1880s, putting a tropical ingredient within reach of an upstate New York village kitchen. The meringue lid, made from the whites left over after the yolks went into the custard, is the frugal signature of the whole genre: nothing in the egg is wasted.