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Delicate Pudding
1½ cups water 1/2 cup sugar 1/2 saltspoon salt 3 tablespoons cornstarch 3 egg whites Juice and rind of 1 lemon Mix sugar, salt and water and bring to the boiling point. Mix the cornstarch in a little cold water and stir it into the boiling syrup. Cook ten minutes; pour over the beaten egg whites; return to the fire a minute to set the egg; add the lemon; turn into a wet mold and set on the ice until serving time. Serve with berries or sliced peaches.
A cornstarch mold lightened with meringue — the sort of pudding filed under "delicate" because it was thought suitable for invalids and children. It works, but two details in the original need translating.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. Half of one is a pinch; measure it as such rather than hunting for precision.
- Whip the whites firstThe recipe assumes the whites are already beaten stiff and waiting. Have them ready before the syrup thickens, because the hot cornstarch must go over them immediately or it will set into a block.
- Cook the starch outThe ten minutes is not padding. Cornstarch needs a few minutes at a bare simmer, stirred constantly, to lose its raw chalky taste and reach full thickening power. Use a heavy pan over low heat so the bottom does not scorch.
- The minute back on the fireThis is the hinge. The original returns the mixture to the heat after the whites go in expressly 'to set the egg', which also firms the foam. Keep it moving and do not let it boil hard, or the whites will tighten and weep. A brief minute over heat should not be relied on as pasteurisation; if that matters to you, use pasteurised whites.
- Lemon last, and off the heatLemon last -- Acid thins cooked cornstarch, so the original's placement of the juice and rind at the very end, after the cooking is done, is worth keeping; add it off the heat and stir it in gently.
- A wet moldRinsing the mold in cold water and not drying it leaves a film that lets the pudding release cleanly. A 1-quart mold or four to six custard cups suits this quantity.
- "Set on the ice"The refrigerator. Allow at least three hours, and overnight is better; the pudding must be fully cold and firm before unmolding.
- YieldAbout four servings. It is light to the point of being insubstantial on its own, which is presumably why the original ends by serving it with berries or sliced peaches.
"Delicate" was a familiar word in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century cookery for food aimed at the sickroom and the nursery: bland, pale, easily digested. Cornstarch puddings of this kind -- close relatives of blancmange and of the lemon "snow pudding" common in American cookbooks of the period -- spread once refined cornstarch was manufactured commercially in the United States from the mid-1800s, giving cooks a cheap thickener in place of the arrowroot or isinglass of older recipes. Beaten whites folded into the hot starch stretch the dish further and turn something stodgy into something spoonable, and the berries or sliced peaches at the end supply most of the flavour.