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Cream Filling (Cup sugar cup corn starch)
1 cup sugar 1/3 cup corn starch 1/8 teaspoon salt 1 egg 2 cups scalded milk 1 teaspoon vanilla extract Mix dry ingredients; add egg slightly beaten and stir into this gradually the scalded milk. Cook about 15 minutes in double boiler, stirring constantly until thickened. Cool slightly and flavor.
Sweetened whipped cream may be used instead of this filling.
A basic cornstarch pastry cream, thickened with a single egg rather than the four or five yolks a French crème pâtissière would use. It behaves predictably if you respect the starch.
- Cook the starch out fullyThe hinge is the full cooking time. Cornstarch needs sustained heat close to boiling to lose its raw, chalky taste and to reach full thickening power; a double boiler will not usually bring it to a rolling boil, which is part of why the recipe asks for about 15 minutes. Pulling it as soon as it looks thick can leave a pasty edge on the flavor.
- TemperingThe instruction to stir the scalded milk in gradually is what keeps the egg from scrambling. Add the first cup in a thin stream while whisking, then the rest can go faster.
- Scalded milkMilk heated to about 180F, just until it shimmers and a rim of bubbles forms at the edge of the pan. In the period this also served to kill off enzymes and bacteria in unpasteurized milk; today it mainly speeds the cooking.
- Double boilerNot optional at this ratio unless you are attentive. Cornstarch and egg scorch readily over direct heat. A heatproof bowl over a pan of barely simmering water works, with the bowl clear of the water.
- Flavor off the heatVanilla extract is alcohol-based and volatile; adding it while the cream is still boiling drives off much of the aroma. Stir it in once the pan is off the heat.
- Skin on coolingPress plastic wrap or buttered parchment directly onto the surface as it cools, or you will get a rubbery skin that will not whisk back in smoothly.
- YieldRoughly two and a half cups, enough to fill a two-layer cake or a batch of cream puffs or filled doughnuts. Best used within a few days if refrigerated, and it does not freeze well.
- If it goes lumpyPush it through a fine sieve while still warm. Lumps are almost always starch that hydrated before it was dispersed, or egg that set too fast.
Cornstarch fillings like this one belong to the American pantry of an era when commercially milled corn starch was cheap and widely marketed as a thickener for puddings, pie fillings and blancmange. Where a European pastry cook would reach for egg yolks and flour, the American household book leans on starch and a single whole egg: cheaper, more forgiving, and stable enough to sit inside a doughnut without weeping. Filled doughnuts and cream puffs were the everyday destination for this kind of filling, and the closing note that sweetened whipped cream may be substituted is the same practical shrug you find throughout these books, where the point is to get something into the pastry rather than to defend a technique. The New Royal Cook Book was issued by the Royal Baking Powder Company, one of the many branded promotional cookbooks that shaped what American home bakers considered standard practice.