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Grape Sponge
Wet 4 rounding tablespoonfuls of corn-starch with a little cold grape juice and then turn it into 1 pint of the juice that is boiling, adding a speck of salt and I rounding teaspoonful of butter. Stir until it is transparent; then remove from the fire and fold in 3 whites of eggs beaten very stiff and dry. Pour into a dish or a fancy mold and stand in a cold place to chill. The yolks of the eggs can be used for the boiled custard which accompanies it. Garnish the dish with grapes if they can be secured.
A cornstarch-thickened grape jelly lightened with beaten whites — a thrifty molded dessert of the blancmange family. It stands or falls on getting the starch fully cooked before the whites go in.
- The hinge: cook the starch until transparentRaw cornstarch tastes chalky and will not set cleanly. Boil the slurry into the juice and keep stirring until the mixture turns from cloudy to glossy and translucent, a good minute or two at a full bubble.
- Rounding tablespoonfulsA "rounding" spoonful is heaped somewhat above level; how much above varied from cook to cook, so four of them is somewhere in the region of 5 to 8 level tablespoons of cornstarch — a firm set for 2 cups of juice, right for unmolding. Use 4 level tablespoons if you want it spoonable rather than sliceable.
- A pint of juiceTwo cups. Concord is the likeliest juice behind a recipe of this date and place: purple, tart, unsweetened or barely sweetened. Modern bottled juice is often much sweeter, so taste before adding anything; the recipe itself calls for no sugar at all.
- A speck of saltA small pinch, on the order of 1/16 to 1/8 teaspoon. It is doing real work here against the flatness of cooked grape juice.
- The egg whitesBeaten stiff and dry, then folded into the hot starch, they are warmed but not reliably cooked through. If serving anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immune-compromised, use pasteurized whites or powdered egg white.
- FoldingFold while the starch is still hot and pourable — once it cools it turns to rubber and the whites will break down as you fight it. Work quickly with a large spoon or spatula, cutting down and lifting over.
- Chilling and unmolding"A cold place" means the refrigerator; give it at least 4 hours, better overnight. Rinse the mold in cold water before filling and it will release with a brief dip in warm water.
- Yield and servingAbout 4 to 6 servings. The boiled custard made from the leftover yolks is not optional in spirit — the sponge alone is lean and tart, and the custard is what makes it a dessert.
Cornstarch desserts like this one belong to the long American afterlife of blancmange, which by the late nineteenth century had shed its almond-milk origins and become a matter of starch, milk or juice, and a mold. "Sponge" in this period is often said to have meant a set dessert lightened with stiffly beaten whites — grape sponge, lemon sponge, prune sponge — as distinct from a "cream," which used whipped cream or a custard base, though the line between the two was not always firmly drawn. The grape here is almost certainly Concord, the hardy American variety that spread through eastern gardens and commercial juice bottling after the Civil War and gave households a cheap, keeping fruit juice through the winter. Cornstarch was pennies, and the recipe pointedly sends the yolks on to a second dish so that nothing is wasted.