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Coffee Custard Without Eggs
1 cup coffee, 1 pint milk. Put into double-boiler with 1/2 cup sugar; 3 tbsp. cornstarch, dissolved in a little cold milk; pinch salt and a small piece of butter. Cook 20 minutes, flavor with vanilla.
— Mrs. Roscoe Blunt
This is a cornstarch pudding in the blancmange family rather than a true custard, which is exactly why it works without eggs. The whole dish hinges on the starch being fully cooked and never lumped.
- The coffeeUse strong brewed coffee, not a milky or sweetened drink — a cup of double-strength drip or leftover breakfast coffee. Since the milk and sugar dilute it considerably, weak coffee gives you a faintly beige sweet pudding and nothing more.
- MeasuresA cup is 8 fl oz and a pint here is the US pint, 2 cups. Total liquid is 3 cups, thickened with 3 tablespoons cornstarch, which sets to a soft spoonable pudding rather than a sliceable mold.
- Slurry firstDissolve the cornstarch in a few tablespoons of cold milk taken from the pint before anything is heated. Cornstarch added dry to warm liquid seizes instantly into lumps that will not cook out.
- Double boiler and the 20 minutesThe long cooking time is a consequence of indirect heat: over simmering water the mixture never exceeds about 200F, so it thickens slowly. Stir for the first several minutes, then every few minutes after. The starch must be cooked well past the point of thickening or the pudding tastes chalky.
- Vanilla lastThe recipe lists the flavoring after the cooking time, so add it at the end; vanilla extract is largely alcohol and its aroma is driven off by prolonged heating. A teaspoon suits this quantity.
- Butter"A small piece" means about a teaspoon to a tablespoon. The recipe adds it at the start with the other ingredients; it is there for gloss and mouthfeel, not structure.
- Setting and skinPour into cups or a bowl while hot and press plastic wrap or buttered paper directly on the surface if you dislike the skin. Chill at least two hours; it thickens further as it cools.
- YieldAbout four small servings. Good with a spoonful of unsweetened whipped cream, which offsets the sweetness of the half cup of sugar.
Eggless "custards" like this one belong to a broader nineteenth-century enthusiasm for cornstarch, which was manufactured in the United States from the 1840s and became a cheap, shelf-stable thickener; puddings of this type are common in community cookbooks. Recipes titled blancmange, cornstarch pudding, and "custard without eggs" are near-identical in construction, differing mainly in flavoring — chocolate, caramel, lemon, or, as here, coffee. The eggless framing was probably practical rather than dietary: eggs were seasonal and dearer in winter, so a pudding built on starch could be made in any month of the year. Philathea classes were young women's Bible classes in the Baraca–Philathea movement, which began in Baptist churches in the 1890s and spread through Protestant denominations in the early twentieth century; cook books compiled by such classes run heavily to inexpensive dishes that scale up for a church supper — which describes this one.