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Cornstarch Pudding
1/2 pt. milk. 1/2 C sugar. 1 egg. 1 T cornstarch 1/2 t lemon extract Pinch salt Place milk and sugar in top of double boiler, and when hot add the cornstarch, egg yolk and salt, which have been mixed together. Cook about five minutes, stirring constantly. When ready to serve add beaten egg white and ½ t lemon extract. Mrs. L. J. Ames. 1 pt. milk 4 T sugar Few grains salt
A plain stovetop blancmange, typed with the ingredient list broken in two — the milk, sugar and salt at the bottom belong at the top. A few quantities need interpreting before you start.
- The abbreviationsT is a tablespoon, t a teaspoon, pt a pint (2 cups). "Few grains salt" and "pinch salt" are most likely the same instruction, duplicated where the ingredient list broke in two; use about 1/8 teaspoon total.
- The egg is never listedThe method calls for a yolk and a white, so one large egg is intended. Separate it before you begin, since the yolk goes in with the cornstarch and the white is beaten and folded in at the end.
- Cornstarch quantity is lowOne tablespoon to a pint of milk gives a pouring custard, not a set pudding. Recipes of the period that were meant to be turned out of a mould generally call for nearer 3 to 4 tablespoons per pint; at 1 tablespoon, serve it in glasses as a soft cream.
- Cornstarch must get hot enoughThis is the hinge. Cornstarch does not thicken properly until it approaches boiling, and a double boiler tops out just under that. Five minutes is a minimum — cook and stir until the mixture visibly thickens and loses its raw, chalky taste, which may take closer to ten.
- Temper the yolkMixing the cornstarch, yolk and salt into a smooth slurry with a little of the cold milk before adding it to the hot milk prevents both lumps and scrambled egg.
- The lemon extractThe list gives 1/2 teaspoon and the method adds 1/2 teaspoon at serving; these are almost certainly the same half-teaspoon, listed once and placed once, so 1/2 teaspoon total. Extract is volatile; adding it off the heat, as directed, keeps the flavour.
- The raw whiteThe beaten white is folded in at the table and gets only the residual heat of the pudding. If raw egg is a concern for who you are feeding, fold the white in the instant the pan comes off the heat, or use a pasteurized white.
- YieldA pint of milk makes four modest servings. Best eaten the day it is made; cornstarch puddings weep on standing.
Cornstarch pudding is the American democratisation of blancmange, which for centuries was set with calf's-foot jelly, isinglass or Irish moss and belonged to cooks with time and money. Commercially refined cornstarch, produced in quantity in the United States from the middle of the nineteenth century, replaced all of that with a box on the shelf, and the boxes themselves carried recipes very close to this one — milk, sugar, an egg, a flavouring extract. Lemon extract dates the dish as much as the cornstarch does: bottled extracts were among the first convenience flavourings to reach ordinary pantries, and they turn up constantly in church and charity cookbooks, where the point of a dessert was that anyone could make it from what she already had. The attribution to Mrs. L. J. Ames is the whole genre in miniature: recipes collected by name from individual women, preserving not grand cookery but what people actually put on the table.