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Pineapple Pudding
2 3/4 cups scalded milk 1/4 cup cold milk 1/3 cup corn-starch 1/4 cup sugar 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/2 can grated pineapple Whites 3 eggs. Follow directions for Rebecca Pudding, and add pineapple just before moulding. Fill individual moulds, previously dipped in cold water. Serve with cream.
A cornstarch blancmange lightened with beaten egg whites and flavoured with canned pineapple, set in small moulds. The whole thing hangs on cooking the starch out properly before the whites go in.
- The hinge: boil the starchSlake the cornstarch in the 1/4 cup cold milk, stir it into the scalded milk, and cook until the mixture comes to a full boil and thickens, stirring constantly. Starch that is only heated tastes chalky and will weep in the mould.
- Scalded milkHeat to about 180F, until steam rises and bubbles ring the edge of the pan. Scalding was originally a safety measure for raw milk; with pasteurised milk it simply shortens the cooking time.
- The egg whitesBeat them stiff and fold them into the hot starch base, which in puddings of this type is normally done while the mixture is still very hot so that the whites are cooked by it. The recipe itself gives no directions, deferring to Rebecca Pudding; if the base has cooled the whites may not be properly cooked.
- "1/2 can" of pineappleCan sizes varied, but half a small tin works out at roughly a cup of grated pineapple with its juice. Drain it lightly if it is very wet, or the pudding will not hold a shape.
- Use canned, not freshFresh pineapple contains bromelain, a protein-digesting enzyme that interferes with protein-set desserts, most notoriously gelatine; canning heats the fruit enough to destroy it. The recipe's call for a can most likely just reflects what was on the grocer's shelf.
- Add the fruit lastStirring the pineapple in just before moulding, as directed, keeps its acid and liquid from thinning the hot starch. Fold gently so the whites are not knocked down.
- Dipping the mouldsRinsing the moulds in cold water and leaving them wet gives a thin film of moisture that releases the pudding cleanly. Dip the outside in hot water briefly to unmould.
- Chilling and yieldCover the surface to stop a skin forming and chill at least three hours until firm. The quantity fills six to eight small moulds; serve with plain cold cream.
Cornstarch puddings like this one were everywhere in American cookbooks from the 1850s onward, once boxed cornstarch became a cheap pantry staple and gave home cooks a reliable setting agent that needed neither isinglass nor gelatine. The pattern here — a master recipe (the Rebecca Pudding referred to) varied by folding in a fruit or a flavouring — is characteristic of the cooking-school teaching style of the period, which taught proportions and method first and treated individual dishes as variations. The pineapple is the modern touch: canned grated pineapple became widely and cheaply available in American groceries around the turn of the twentieth century as Hawaiian canneries scaled up, and it turns up quickly in moulded desserts, where a tinned tropical fruit made a plain milk pudding look like a company dish.