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Cocoanut Cream Pudding
Scald one pint of milk and add one cup of Larkin Shredded Cocoanut; stir in three tablespoons of Larkin Corn Starch moistened in one-fourth cup of milk.
Beat the yolks of two eggs with three-fourths cup of
A standard boiled cornstarch-and-yolk cream, flavoured and thickened with coconut. The technique is straightforward; the brand names and the coconut itself are what need translating.
- Larkin productsLarkin was a Buffalo firm that sold soap, groceries and household goods direct to consumers by mail, and its cookbooklets named its own line throughout. Read "Larkin Corn Starch" as plain cornstarch and "Larkin Shredded Cocoanut" as desiccated shredded coconut.
- Coconut sweetnessThe shredded coconut of the period was unsweetened and quite dry. Most supermarket shredded coconut today is sweetened and moist; if you use it, the sugar in the custard needs cutting back or the pudding will be cloying.
- Cornstarch ratioThree tablespoons to a pint of milk gives a thick spoonable pudding rather than a pourable custard. Slurry it in cold milk, as directed, and never add it dry to hot milk.
- ScaldingScalding means bringing the milk just to the point where bubbles ring the edge, around 180F, not to a rolling boil. It softens the coconut and shortens the cooking of the starch.
- Tempering the yolksWhisk a ladle of the hot thickened milk into the beaten yolks before returning them to the pan. Yolks dropped straight into the hot mixture will curdle into threads that no amount of beating will smooth out.
- Cooking the starch throughCornstarch needs to bubble for a minute or so to lose its raw taste and to set properly; the starch also protects the yolks, so brief boiling will not curdle them provided you work over moderate heat and stir constantly.
- The two whitesThe text breaks off before the whites are accounted for. Many recipes of this type use them, either folded in or beaten with sugar into a meringue and browned, but this book does not say so here.
- YieldA pint of milk with two eggs makes roughly four to six servings, depending on whether it is served in cups or turned out.
Cornstarch puddings became a staple of American home desserts in the second half of the nineteenth century, when refined cornstarch was sold cheaply in boxes and gave cooks a reliable thickener that did not depend on a large number of eggs. Coconut arrived in the same commercial wave: dried shredded coconut, packed in tins and later in paper, meant a tropical flavour could sit on a Northern pantry shelf year round. Books like this one were published by grocery firms as advertising, which is why the ingredients carry a brand name in the text itself; the recipes were genuinely useful, and the repeated mention of the company's cornstarch and coconut was the price of admission.