Foamy Sauce
One cup of milk One tablespoon of Larkin Corn Starch Two tablespoons of butter One-half cup of sugar One egg Moisten the Corn Starch in a small portion of the milk. Scald the remainder, stir in the Corn Starch and add the butter. Beat the sugar and stir into it the milk. Beat the white of the egg until stiff and fold into the custard carefully.
A cornstarch-thickened pudding sauce, lightened with beaten egg white. The written directions have a gap where the egg yolk should be, so read the sequence before you start.
- The missing yolkThe recipe calls for one egg, folds in the white, and never says what becomes of the yolk. "Beat the sugar and stir into it the milk" almost certainly means beat the sugar with the yolk, then temper the hot cornstarch milk into it. Add the hot mixture in a thin stream while whisking, or the yolk will scramble.
- Scald means about 180FMilk is scalded when it steams and a ring of small bubbles forms at the edge, not when it boils. Cornstarch needs to reach a full simmer to thicken and lose its raw taste, so let the mixture bubble briefly before the butter goes in.
- One tablespoon is a pouring sauceA tablespoon of cornstarch to a cup of milk gives a sauce that coats a spoon and no more. If you want it thick enough to mound on a pudding, use closer to a tablespoon and a half, and expect it to set further as it cools.
- Fold, then serveThe beaten white is what makes it foamy, and reheating collapses it. Fold the white in off the heat, just before the sauce goes to the table, and do not return the pan to the burner.
- The raw whiteThe white is folded into custard that has cooled somewhat and is never cooked again, so it stays essentially raw. Anyone cooking for small children, older adults or pregnant eaters should use pasteurized egg white, or hold the sauce hot enough that the white is set by the residual heat.
- Larkin Corn StarchA house brand, not a different product. Any modern cornstarch works in the same quantity; British readers should use cornflour, not cornmeal.
- Yield and servingAbout a cup and a half, enough for four to six servings. Sauces of this kind were generally served with steamed and boiled puddings, baked apples or plain cake, and are best warm rather than hot.
Foamy sauce belongs to a family of egg-lightened dessert sauces that filled the same role in American cooking that a pouring custard did in England: something to make a plain steamed or boiled pudding worth eating. The older versions were built on creamed butter and sugar with a beaten egg white worked in, which is why butter survives here even though the cornstarch is doing the thickening. The Larkin Company of Buffalo, a soap manufacturer that expanded into groceries and household goods sold by mail and through neighborhood clubs, issued cookbooks of this kind to keep its own branded staples in front of customers, and the appearance of the brand name inside the ingredient list is the whole point of the page. Cornstarch itself had been a cheap, reliable American pantry thickener since the mid-nineteenth century.