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Orange Cream Filling
Melt 2 tablespoons butter, add 4 tablespoons cornstarch, and when mixed add Grated rind 1 orange 1 cup orange juice and 1 cup sugar. Bring to boiling point, stirring all the time. Cook 15 minutes over boiling water. Add 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice. Cool and fold in 1 cup cream beaten stiff.
A cornstarch-thickened orange curd, lightened with whipped cream — meant as a filling for layer cakes, cream puffs or tart shells rather than eaten as a pudding on its own.
- Cook over boiling water"Cook 15 minutes over boiling water" means a double boiler: a bowl or upper pan set over a pan of simmering water. Bring the mixture to a boil directly on the burner first to set the starch, then move it over the water for the long, gentle cook that removes the raw cornstarch taste. Over direct heat for 15 minutes it will scorch.
- Butter and starch firstThe melted butter plus cornstarch is a starch paste, not a flour roux — it needs no browning. Stir the cornstarch in off the heat so it disperses, then add the juice and sugar. Lumps that form now will not cook out.
- Orange juice variesJuice varies a great deal by variety and season, and the lemon juice is there to sharpen a base that is otherwise very sweet. Taste after cooking and add a little more lemon if it reads flat.
- Grate the rind finelyTake only the coloured zest, no white pith, and add it with the juice so its oils infuse during the long cook. A microplane gives a finer result than a coarse grater.
- Cool completely before the creamThe filling must be cold, not merely warm, or the whipped cream will slacken and weep. Cover the surface directly with plastic or a butter paper to keep a skin from forming, then chill.
- Cream"Cream beaten stiff" means heavy cream whipped to soft-to-firm peaks and unsweetened — the base already carries a full cup of sugar. Fold in two or three additions.
- Yield and keepingRoughly three to four cups, depending on how much volume the whipped cream holds after folding — enough for a two-layer cake or a batch of cream puffs. Because of the cream it belongs in the refrigerator and should be used within two days; it does not freeze well.
This comes from Alice Bradley's *For Luncheon and Supper Guests*, one of a run of small entertaining books she produced in the 1920s while she ran Miss Farmer's School of Cookery in Boston and edited the cooking pages of *Woman's Home Companion*. The style is pure Boston Cooking School: exact tablespoon measures, a starch-thickened base cooked over boiling water, and a fruit curd stretched with whipped cream so that a modest amount of orange fills a whole cake. Fillings like this became common in American cookbooks of the period, though the reasons are easier to guess at than to document. It is sometimes likened to a domesticated cousin of French *crème pâtissière* lightened into a *crème légère*, but the comparison only goes so far: pastry cream is thickened with eggs, and this filling contains none.