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Orange Pudding
4 Florida oranges 1 pint milk 1/4 cup sugar 1/4 cup cornstarch 2 eggs A few grains salt Pare the oranges, removing all the white skin. Slice the oranges, remove the seeds, and cut the slices into dice (a sharp knife will be required for this) or separate the oranges into sections, and cut the sections into small pieces. Put the diced oranges into a pudding dish.
Save out a little of the milk with which to stir the cornstarch smooth. Heat the remainder of the milk, with the sugar, in a double boiler. When the milk is boiling hot, stir the cornstarch and milk mixture into it, whipping it in, in a small stream. Cook fifteen minutes. Separate the white from the yolk of one of the eggs. Beat the whole eggs and the yolk. Stir some of the hot mixture into the beaten egg, then stir the egg into the hot mixture. Add the salt. Cool partially, then pour over the oranges. Beat the white of the egg, fold into it 1 1/2 tablespoons sugar. Spread on top of the pudding and put in the oven to brown lightly.
A cornstarch blancmange poured over fresh orange and finished with a thin meringue. The whole thing turns on keeping the oranges dry and the custard hot enough to set the starch.
- Cook the starch out fullyThe fifteen minutes in the double boiler is not padding: cornstarch needs sustained heat above about 195F to lose its raw, chalky taste and reach full thickening power. Stir often, and expect a very thick pudding rather than a pouring sauce.
- Pith and juiceRemoving all the white skin matters as much for texture as for bitterness. Cut the oranges over a bowl, then drain the diced fruit well before it goes into the dish; loose juice thins the set custard and can make it weep.
- The eggsTwo eggs, one of them separated, gives you one whole egg plus one yolk for the custard and one white for the meringue. Tempering with hot mixture before returning it to the pan is the step that keeps it from scrambling.
- Acid and starchOrange juice contains enough acid to weaken cornstarch if it is boiled with it, and here the fruit is kept out of the pan and the hot custard poured over it, which sidesteps the problem whether or not that was the reason. Cool the custard only until it stops steaming heavily, or it will skin over before it can be spread.
- Browning the meringueThe recipe gives no temperature, only 'brown lightly'. In a modern oven a hot setting of 400 to 425F will colour the top in five to eight minutes; 350F will do it more slowly, with more heat reaching the pudding beneath.
- Meringue proportionsA tablespoon and a half of sugar to one white makes a soft meringue that browns fast and cuts cleanly; it will not hold overnight. Serve the pudding the day it is made, chilled or barely cool.
- Vessel and yieldA 1 1/2-quart pudding dish or deep pie plate holds this comfortably. It serves four to six.
- Florida orangesAny sweet eating orange works; a navel is easiest to section, and blood oranges give a striking result under the white meringue.
Cornstarch puddings like this one belong to the age of American starch cookery, from roughly the mid-nineteenth century onward, when commercially milled cornstarch became a cheap household staple and cooks used it to stretch milk and eggs into a dessert costing a fraction of a true custard. The pairing with fresh oranges suggests a date after rail shipment had made Florida and California citrus a winter commonplace in northern kitchens. The meringue lid, browned rather than baked through, is the same finish used on lemon pies and queen of puddings, and it uses up the white left over from the custard \u in cookery books of this kind.