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Ice-Cream Pudding
One heaping tablespoonful of corn-starch dissolved in cold water, with a pinch of salt; pour on 1 pint of boiling water, stirring constantly, stir in the stiffly beaten whites of 3 eggs, and boil a minute; pour in a deep dish and set away to cool. For the sauce take the yolks of 3 eggs, 1 teacupful of sweet milk, and 2/3 of a cupful of sugar, boil in rice boiler to prevent burning, and flavor with lemon. This is delicious and economical.
A cornstarch blancmange lightened with beaten egg whites, served cold under a stirred custard — the whole thing built from three eggs, a pint of water and a cup of milk. Two details carry it: the whites must go in off a hard boil and be worked in fast, and the custard must not actually boil despite what the text says.
- The hinge: the egg whitesAdd the stiffly beaten whites to the thickened cornstarch with the pan barely at a simmer and stir hard for the stated minute. Dumped into a rolling boil they seize into threads and the pudding turns grainy rather than snowy.
- "Boil in rice boiler"A rice boiler is a double boiler. The yolk sauce is a stirred custard and should be cooked over simmering water only until it coats a spoon, around 170-175F. Taken to a true boil it will curdle, whatever the instruction says.
- TeacupfulA teacup in period American books is not a fixed measure; it is often reckoned at roughly 6 fl oz, about three-quarters of a modern cup. Use about 3/4 cup milk. The sugar is given as 2/3 of a cupful, so measure it as 2/3 cup.
- Heaping tablespoonfulAbout 1 1/2 level tablespoons of cornstarch. For a pint of water this gives a soft, spoonable set rather than something you can unmould; if you want to turn it out of a mould, go to 3 level tablespoons.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh whole milk, specified to distinguish it from the sour or buttermilk that older recipes often call for. Any modern whole milk works.
- Flavor with lemonEither a teaspoon of lemon extract or the zest of half a lemon steeped in the warm milk and strained out. Lemon juice added to a warm custard risks curdling it.
- Chilling"Set away to cool" means cooling until fully cold and set; in a modern kitchen allow several hours in the refrigerator. Press plastic wrap onto the surface or a skin forms.
- YieldServes four modestly. The pudding is nearly flavourless on its own by design — the custard sauce carries it, so be generous with the sauce.
The name is aspirational rather than descriptive: there is no cream and no freezing, only cornstarch, water and egg white whipped into something pale and cold enough to suggest ice cream on the table. Cornstarch puddings of this kind became common in American cookbooks as commercial cornstarch grew cheap and widely available over the nineteenth century, and starch manufacturers published recipe pamphlets promoting them as an economical alternative to egg- and cream-heavy custards. The construction here is thrifty in a very deliberate way — one set of three eggs does double duty, whites in the pudding and yolks in the sauce, with nothing wasted. The closing note that it is "delicious and economical" pairs the two virtues as such recipes often did.