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Slip
One tablespoon of cornstarch, a pint of boiling water, one small cup of sugar, juice and rind of one lemon. Boil till thick and pour in a baking dish. Beat the white of an egg with a tablespoon of sugar spread on top, brown slightly and serve cold with cold boiled custard.
A lemon cornstarch pudding under a thin meringue, floated in stirred custard — the sort of thing a 19th-century sickroom cook made to be swallowed without effort. A few of the quantities need judgment.
- The starch is very lightOne tablespoon of cornstarch to a pint of water sets to a barely-thickened sauce, not a pudding that will hold a shape. If you want something spoonable that supports a meringue, three to four tablespoons per pint is the usual modern proportion. The original may be thin by intention, for an invalid, or may reflect a larger old tablespoon.
- Slake before boilingMix the cornstarch smooth with a little cold water first, then add it to the boiling water. Dropping dry starch into boiling liquid gives lumps that no amount of beating will remove.
- Add the lemon juice lastAcid breaks down cornstarch gel over heat. Cook the starch, sugar and water until clear and thick, then stir in the juice and grated rind off the heat. The rind should be zest only — no white pith.
- "One small cup"Nineteenth-century cups were not standardised, and a "small cup" was often a teacup, well under the modern 8 ounces. Treat it as somewhere between a half and two-thirds of a cup (roughly 100–130 g) and sweeten to taste; a full cup of sugar to a pint of water is cloying with only one lemon against it.
- Browning the meringueOne egg white with only a tablespoon of sugar makes a soft, unstable meringue. Spread it on the hot pudding so the underside sets, then colour it briefly in a hot oven or under a broiler, watching constantly. The recipe gives no temperature, only "brown slightly." A meringue with this little sugar is liable to weep as it cools.
- Cold boiled custardThis means a stirred pouring custard — milk, egg yolks and sugar cooked over water until it coats a spoon, never actually boiled. Two yolks and a tablespoon of sugar to a cup of milk is the usual proportion. Chill it thoroughly; it is served as a sauce around or under the pudding.
- YieldA pint of liquid gives roughly four half-cup servings. It must be fully cold before serving, so allow two or three hours in the refrigerator.
"Slip" is an old name for a soft-set milk dish — in early English and American use, a junket of milk turned with rennet; the name is often explained as a set soft enough to slip from its mould, though that is traditional explanation rather than documented etymology. It was later borrowed for the cornstarch and arrowroot puddings that replaced such junkets in the 19th century. Many American and British household books of the 1880s and 1890s carried an invalid-cookery section, on the assumption that the woman of the house would nurse the sick at home and needed a repertoire of bland, easily swallowed foods — gruels, beef tea, wine whey, arrowroot, blancmange. Cornstarch, commercially available in the United States from the middle of the century, was prized for exactly this work: it thickened without eggs or butter, tasted of nothing, and was thought to be gentle on a weak stomach. The lemon and the meringue are the only concessions to pleasure.