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Fried Corn-Starch Pudding
Make the corn-starch pudding as usual and pour into a wet mold to get cold and firm. Then unmold to cut in small, rather thin slices. Dip these slices into beaten egg, then roll in cake crumbs, and drop into smoking hot fat to become a golden brown color. Make a syrup of 1 cupful of sugar and ¼ of a cupful of water, to it add 1 gill of maraschino, and serve with the fried pudding.
A thrifty way to turn a plain molded cornstarch pudding into a fried dessert. The original assumes you already know the pudding, and the printed measurements have suffered at the hands of the typesetter.
- The pudding base"As usual" means a stovetop blancmange: roughly 1/2 cup cornstarch and 1/2 cup sugar whisked into 4 cups milk with a pinch of salt, cooked until it thickens and boils for a minute or two, then flavored with vanilla. It must be stiffer than a pouring custard or the slices will collapse in the fat.
- Wet moldRinsing the mold with cold water and leaving it damp is what lets the set pudding release cleanly. A loaf pan works better than a fluted mold here, since you want flat slices.
- ChillingCold and firm means at least four hours, and overnight is better. A pudding that is merely cool will slump the moment it hits hot fat.
- Syrup proportionsThe printed page was checked: the syrup is 1 cupful of sugar to a quarter cupful of water, as given here. That is a simple 4:1 sugar-to-water boil, thickened before the maraschino goes in.
- A gillHalf a cup. A full half cup of maraschino in a cup of syrup is potent by modern taste; a quarter cup gives plenty of flavor.
- MaraschinoThe clear cherry liqueur distilled from marasca cherries, not the syrup from a jar of bright red cocktail cherries.
- Cake crumbsDry, fine crumbs from a plain sponge or pound cake. Stale cake dried in a low oven and rolled fine coats better than fresh, which clumps. Dry breadcrumbs are an acceptable substitute.
- Smoking hot fatRead this as 365-375F, not literally smoking. Fry in small batches, drain on paper, and serve at once while the crust is crisp and the center is still cool and firm.
- YieldA quart of pudding cut into thin slices serves six to eight.
Cornstarch reached American kitchens in quantity in the mid-nineteenth century, and by the time this recipe was printed a box of it and a quart of milk produced a dessert for a family at almost no cost. Frying slices of a cold set pudding is an old European trick, closest to the Italian latte fritto and the crema frita of Spain, where a stiff milk cream is chilled, cut, breaded and fried. The maraschino syrup is the one indulgence, and a telling one: a cordial from the Dalmatian coast, imported and much used in American dessert cookery of the period, poured over what is essentially a way of using up yesterday's pudding and yesterday's cake.