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Chocolate Pudding with Cornstarch & Vanilla
1 pt. milk. 4 T sugar. Few grains salt. 1½ sq. bitter chocolate 2 T cornstarch 1 C whipped cream Melt chocolate in top of double boiler, add milk and sugar and when hot, add the cornstarch dissolved in ⅓ C milk or water and cook until it thickens. Set aside to cool. Before serving beat up the chocolate mixture with spoon or egg beater and fold in the whipped cream flavored with vanilla and two tablespoons powdered sugar. Four servings. Mrs. F. J. Wright.
A cornstarch blancmange lightened with whipped cream — the church-supper ancestor of chocolate mousse. The ingredient list as printed is incomplete, so read the whole method before you start.
- Missing quantitiesThe list gives chocolate, cornstarch and cream, but the method calls for milk and sugar that were never quantified, and "add milk" appears before the 1½ cups used to slake the cornstarch. Treating the 1½ cups as the total liquid and sweetening the base with about 1/3 cup sugar is one workable reconstruction, but it is not what the page says.
- Bitter chocolate"Bitter chocolate" is unsweetened baking chocolate. Squares of the period ran an ounce each, so 1½ squares is 1½ ounces — all the sweetness comes from the added sugar.
- Cornstarch, not eggsTwo tablespoons of cornstarch to 1½ cups liquid gives a soft set, and softer again once the unquantified milk is added. Slake it in cold liquid, add it to the hot chocolate milk, and cook it through rather than merely warming it; cornstarch that is only briefly heated tastes raw.
- The double boilerDirect heat is fine for the cornstarch stage and faster, but the double boiler protects the chocolate from scorching and keeps the starch from catching. If you use a saucepan, stir constantly and pull it the moment it thickens.
- Cool covered"Set aside to cool" will give you a skin. Press plastic wrap or buttered paper onto the surface, or accept the skin and beat it back in at the next step, which is what the recipe assumes.
- Beating and foldingThe set pudding must be beaten smooth before the cream goes in, or you get lumps of gel suspended in foam. Whip the cream to soft peaks only with the vanilla and 2 tablespoons powdered sugar, then fold in two additions.
- Yield and timingFour servings, as stated — small by modern dessert standards. Fold in the cream no more than an hour or two before serving; the starch base weeps if it sits overnight after lightening.
Cornstarch puddings like this one filled a specific gap in the American home kitchen through the second half of the nineteenth century and into the 1930s: they were cheap, needed no eggs, and set reliably without gelatin, which was fussy before packaged powders became common. Community cookbooks compiled by church societies are full of them, often signed with the contributor's married name, which was both a credit and a guarantee. The whipped cream folded in at the end marks this as a slightly grander version, closer to what menus of the era called a chocolate cream, and its brevity is characteristic of the genre: Mrs. Wright was writing for neighbors who already knew how thick a cornstarch pudding should be, which is why the milk and sugar went unmeasured.