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Corn Starch Blanc Mange
2 quarts of milk and a cupful more. 12 ounces of sugar. 6 ounces of corn starch. 1 ounce of butter. A pinch of salt. Flavoring. Boil the milk with the sugar in it. Mix the starch with the extra cup of milk, stir it in and let cook a few minutes. Take from the fire, be t in the butter to whiten it, flavor, and put the blanc mange immediately into custard cups previous'y wet with water. When cold take it out of the cups and serve either with a little sweetened cream, or fruit, or fruit jelly. Instead of cups it may be spread in bright pans, cut in square blocks and served with the smooth bottom side up.
A bakery-scale cornstarch pudding stiff enough to turn out of its mold. The proportions are given by weight, which is worth keeping — volume measures of cornstarch vary too much for a set that has to stand on a plate.
- Weights in modern terms6 oz cornstarch is about 1 1/3 cups, 12 oz sugar about 1 3/4 cups, 1 oz butter is 2 tablespoons. The milk is 9 cups total: 8 cups boiled with the sugar, 1 cup held back to slake the starch.
- YieldRoughly 9 cups of finished blanc mange, which fills twelve to sixteen custard cups. Halve everything for a household batch.
- The hinge: cook the starch out"Let cook a few minutes" means a genuine boil for two to three minutes after the slurry goes in, stirring constantly. Cornstarch thickens before it is cooked, and pudding pulled early tastes chalky and can thin again as it sits.
- ScorchingSugared milk catches on the bottom of the pan quickly. Use a heavy saucepan over moderate heat and stir with a flat-edged spoon or spatula that reaches the corners.
- "Beat in the butter to whiten it"The text has a typo: beat, not be. The butter goes in off the heat, and the recipe's stated purpose is colour; 1 ounce in 9 cups contributes little flavour.
- Flavoring goes in lastVanilla, almond extract, lemon zest or rosewater are all period-appropriate. Add after the pan leaves the fire, since alcohol-based extracts lose most of their aroma in a boiling pot.
- Wetting the cupsRinsing the molds with cold water and leaving them wet is what lets the blanc mange release cleanly. Fill while the mixture is still hot and pourable; it sets fast once it begins to cool.
- Chilling and unmoldingCover the surface with plastic wrap pressed on if you dislike a skin, then chill at least three hours or overnight. To turn out, run a thin knife around the edge and invert onto a wet plate.
- ServingSweetened cream, sliced fruit, or a spoonful of currant or raspberry jelly all work. The pan-and-blocks method makes a firmer, plainer sweet, cut into squares and served smooth side up.
Blanc mange began as a medieval European dish of pounded almonds and stock or milk, set with rice flour — the name is simply French for "white eating," and whiteness was the whole point of it. What changed by the time this book was written is the thickener: American cornstarch became a cheap grocery staple in the second half of the nineteenth century, generally traced to the Oswego, New York works associated with Thomas Kingsford, and the starch companies pushed blanc mange hard in their pamphlets because it used a great deal of their product and almost nothing else. That is why this book gives it in bakery quantities and by weight: it was inexpensive, it could be made in the morning and unmolded to order, and a bowl of jelly or a little fruit turned the same cheap white pudding into several different items on a bill of fare.