Home › Fruit Desserts › Orange Fluff
Orange Fluff
1/2 cup sugar 5 tablespoons cornstarch 1/4 cup orange juice 1 tablespoon lemon juice 1 pint boiling water Mix the cornstarch and sugar. Stir into the boiling water. Stir constantly, and cook directly over the fire until it thickens. Put in a double boiler, and cook from one to two hours. Cornstarch cooked from one to two hours loses the raw taste which is objectionable to many people. Add the fruit juices. Stir until thoroughly mixed; then pour into molds wet with cold water. Serve with a sauce made as follows:-- 1/4 cup butter 3/4 cup sugar 1/4 cup orange juice 3/4 cup water 1 tablespoon cornstarch 1 tablespoon lemon juice Moisten the cornstarch with a little cold water, and stir into one-half cup of the boiling water. Then set in a double boiler, and cook for one or two hours. Cream the butter, and add the sugar gradually. Add the remaining one-quarter cup of boiling water. Turn all slowly into the cooked cornstarch, and cook until it thickens slightly. Remove from the fire, and add the orange and the lemon juice. Serve cold.
A molded cornstarch pudding with a buttery citrus sauce, from the era when cornstarch was the workhorse of the dessert course. Two things in the method are worth adjusting, and one is worth keeping.
- Add the juice off the heatThis is the hinge. Acid breaks down cooked starch, so the orange and lemon go in after the pudding has finished cooking, exactly as written. Stirring juice into the pot while it is still over heat will thin the pudding and it will never set firm enough to unmold.
- The one-to-two-hour cookingThe book is right that long, gentle cooking drives off the chalky raw-starch taste, but today's refined cornstarch gelatinizes fully in a few minutes. Fifteen to twenty minutes in the double boiler, covered, is usually enough; the full hour does no harm beyond needing you to top up the water.
- "Directly over the fire"Means direct heat on the burner, as opposed to the double boiler. Bring the water to a real boil, then rain in the sugar-and-starch mixture while whisking, or it will lump.
- ProportionsFive tablespoons of cornstarch to a pint of water is a stiff set, deliberately so — this is meant to be turned out of a mold and hold its shape. If you plan to serve it in glasses rather than unmolded, three tablespoons gives a softer, more pleasant spoonful.
- Wetting the moldsRinsing molds with cold water and leaving them damp is the old release trick, and it works. Chill at least four hours, then loosen the edge with a fingertip and invert.
- The sauceRead the sauce twice: half a cup of the water is boiled and thickened with the starch, the remaining quarter cup of boiling water goes into the creamed butter and sugar, and the two are combined. It totals three-quarters of a cup. The finished sauce is thin and pourable, not a pudding — creamed butter will separate slightly as it cools, so whisk before serving.
- OrangesJuice varies a good deal in sweetness and acidity. Taste, and cut the sugar in the sauce if your juice is very sweet, or add extra lemon.
- YieldServes four to six, depending on mold size. Both pudding and sauce are served cold, so make them the day before.
Cornstarch puddings like this one filled the dessert pages of American cookbooks from the 1850s onward, after corn starch became a cheap, shelf-stable pantry staple sold in branded boxes — the packets carried recipes, and "cornstarch blanc mange" became, by many accounts, one of the standard molded desserts of the ordinary household, standing in for the expensive gelatin and isinglass preparations of grander tables. "Fluff" here signals lightness rather than any beaten egg white; the dish is pure starch, sugar and fruit juice. The long double-boiler cooking the author insists on is a period preoccupation: cooks of the day are often said to have complained of the "raw" taste of underdone starch, a fair criticism of the coarser cornstarch then on sale.