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Marshmallow Pudding a la Stanley
1/2 pound marshmallows 1 cup heavy cream 1/2 teaspoon vanilla 1/4 cup candied cherries 1/2 cup English walnut meats 2 tablespoons powdered sugar Soak cherries in rum to cover one hour, then cut in pieces. Cut walnut meats and marshmallows in small pieces. Whip cream, add sugar and vanilla, fold in remaining ingredients. Mould and chill.
An unbaked, unstirred icebox dessert from the era when marshmallows were treated as a pantry staple rather than a campfire item. The whole thing hinges on the cream: whip it firm enough to hold the weight of the fruit and nuts, or the mould will weep and slump.
- MarshmallowsHalf a pound is about 8 ounces, roughly 4 cups of modern miniatures or somewhere around 20 to 25 standard large marshmallows. Minis can be used whole and save the cutting; if you cut full-size ones, oil or wet the scissors and work quickly or they will glue together.
- Powdered sugarThis is confectioners' sugar, cornstarch and all. Two tablespoons is a light hand for a cup of cream, which is correct here because the marshmallows carry most of the sweetness.
- Whipping the creamTake it to firm peaks, not the soft billowy stage. There is no gelatin and no cooking to set this pudding, so the aerated fat is the entire structure. Cold bowl, cold cream, and stop the moment the whisk leaves a clean track.
- English walnut meatsOrdinary walnuts, so called to distinguish them from native black walnuts, which are far stronger in flavour. Half a cup, chopped, and toasting them briefly first improves them considerably.
- The rum-soaked cherriesDrain them well before folding in. Loose alcohol thins whipped cream and will leave streaks of syrup in the finished mould. Candied cherries labelled for baking are the right thing; maraschino cherries are wetter and will need blotting.
- Mould and chillNo time is given. Pack into a loaf pan or bowl lined with plastic wrap and give it at least 4 hours, preferably overnight, in the refrigerator. If you want a firm slice-able mould rather than a soft spoon dessert, freeze it for 3 to 4 hours and let it stand 10 minutes before turning out.
- YieldSomething over a quart, serving six to eight in small portions. It is very rich and does not want large helpings.
Dish names in the form "a la Stanley" belong to the hotel and restaurant kitchens of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, where a garnish or a house treatment was attached to a proper name and then passed into domestic cookbooks; the attribution here is conventional rather than documented. What makes the recipe of its moment is the marshmallow itself. Originally a lozenge thickened with the mucilage of the marsh mallow root, by the 1900s it was a cheap gelatin-and-sugar confection sold by the pound at the candy counter, and American recipe writers put it to work as a ready-made sweetener and softener in fillings, frostings and cold puddings. Combined with whipped cream, candied fruit, nuts and a splash of spirits, it produces one of the many unbaked "moulded" desserts that filled the pages of dessert chapters before home refrigeration was universal.