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Cocoa Charlotte (Without Cream)
1 pint of water, Whites of 2 eggs, 1/2 a teaspoonful of vanilla, 1/2 a cup of sugar, 2 level tablespoonfuls of cornstarch, 1/2 a teaspoonful of cinnamon, 3 tablespoonfuls of cocoa.
Dissolve the cornstarch in a quarter of a cup of cold water, add it to the pint of boiling water, stir until it thickens, add the sugar and the cocoa, which have been thoroughly mixed together. Remove from the fire, add the cinnamon and vanilla, and pour slowly over the stiffly beaten whites of eggs. Pour at once into a pudding mould, and put away in a cold place to harden. Serve with plain cream.--Mabel Richards Dulon.
A moulded cornstarch pudding lightened with beaten egg white, and the title is a courtesy: nothing lines the mould. The whites are never cooked, which is the problem.
- The whites are never cookedThe cornstarch base is thickened over heat, but the pan comes off the fire before the mixture meets the eggs, and the charlotte is then chilled and served cold. A pint of thickened liquid poured slowly over two stiffly beaten whites will not reliably bring them anywhere near a pasteurising temperature, and nothing heats them afterwards.
- Why that matters nowSalmonella can be present inside an intact shell egg, not merely on the shell, and a raw white folded through a chilled dessert offers no kill step at any point. Pasteurised whites, sold in cartons and increasingly in shell, work here with no change to the method at all. A cooked meringue is the other route.
- A later printing changed the method, but not thisWalter Baker reprinted the recipe in 1924 with "and boil for ten minutes" added after the sugar and cocoa go in, and with the cinnamon dropped. The longer boil cooks the cornstarch properly, which the original does not, but the base still comes off the heat before it reaches the whites, so it does not solve the safety problem.
- Cook the cornstarch anywayAs printed you stir "until it thickens" and stop, which is barely enough. Cornstarch needs a minute or two at a simmer to lose its raw taste and reach full thickening power, and the 1924 revision is nearer the mark than the original.
- Mix the cocoa and sugar dryThe recipe tells you to, and the reason is that dry cocoa tipped into a hot starch gel clumps immediately and will not stir smooth.
- "Charlotte" is borrowedA charlotte proper is a mould lined with ladyfingers, sponge or buttered bread. There is no lining here -- this is a blancmange that has been aerated. The Chocolate Charlotte earlier in the book does line its mould, and is worth comparing.
- The mouldRinse it with cold water and do not grease it; a pint-and-a-half mould suits this quantity. Give it at least four hours in the refrigerator and dip it briefly in warm water to turn out.
- If you want to make itBeat pasteurised whites and proceed exactly as written. Or leave the whites out altogether, let the cocoa base go cold, and fold in softly whipped cream -- a different dessert, but a reliable one, and it undoes the economy the recipe was built on.
The words "Without Cream" in the title carry the whole idea. This is an economy dessert, using two beaten egg whites to give lift and lightness to a cornstarch pudding where cream would otherwise have been needed, in a booklet that calls for cream freely elsewhere -- the same impulse that has Mrs. Ewing thickening her "creamy" cocoa with flour a few pages earlier. Cornstarch made that possible. Commercially manufactured in the United States from the 1840s, it was cheap, kept indefinitely on a shelf and set firm enough to unmould, and the moulded cornstarch pudding became one of the staples of the American dessert table in the second half of the century. The contributor, Mabel Richards Dulon, is one of the booklet's anonymous correspondents rather than one of its cooking-school names.