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Chocolate Cream (Cups scalded milk cup cold)
2 cups scalded milk 1/3 cup cold milk 5 tablespoons corn-starch 1/2 cup sugar 1½ squares unsweetened chocolate 3 tablespoons hot water ¼ teaspoon salt Whites 3 eggs 1 teaspoon vanilla Mix corn-starch, sugar, and salt, dilute with cold milk, add to scalded milk, and cook over hot water ten minutes, stirring constantly until thickened; melt chocolate, add hot water, stir until smooth, and add to cooked mixture; add whites of eggs beaten stiff, and vanilla. Mould, chill, and serve with cream.
A cornstarch blancmange enriched with chocolate and lightened with beaten whites, set in a mould and turned out cold. It is straightforward, but two details decide whether it slices cleanly or weeps.
- The hinge: cook the starch fullyTen minutes over simmering water, stirring constantly, is not padding. Cornstarch needs sustained heat to hydrate fully, lose its raw taste and reach full thickening power; pulled early it may thin as it cools and set poorly.
- "Cook over hot water"This means a double boiler — a bowl or upper pan over simmering water, not sitting in it. Direct heat scorches a starch-and-milk mixture at the bottom before the middle thickens.
- Chocolate squaresA square of unsweetened chocolate is one ounce, so 1 1/2 squares is 1 1/2 oz. Use a true unsweetened baking chocolate; semisweet or a modern high-percentage bar will change both the sugar balance and the set.
- SaltThe salt quantity as printed is unclear; a quarter teaspoon is the conventional amount for this volume of milk and is what the proportions suggest.
- Folding the whitesBeat the whites stiff but not dry and fold them into the hot pudding in two additions, working quickly. Stirring them in flat gives a dense, slightly rubbery result rather than the light texture the name promises.
- Egg whites and heatThe whites are folded into a hot mixture that then goes straight to the mould, so they are warmed rather than cooked through. If you are serving anyone who should avoid undercooked egg, use pasteurized whites.
- MouldingRinse the mould with cold water and do not grease it — a wet mould releases a starch pudding cleanly. Chill at least four hours, or overnight, before turning out onto a cold plate.
- Yield and servingRoughly three cups to a quart, serving about six. "Serve with cream" most likely means plain cold cream rather than whipped.
Cornstarch moulds like this one were a workhorse cold dessert of nineteenth-century American kitchens, cheap to make and reliable in a household without refrigeration beyond an icebox. Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book gives a whole family of them, built on the same starch-and-milk base with one flavoring changed, which is exactly how the book taught cooking: learn the proportion, then vary it. The addition of stiffly beaten whites marks this as a richer variation on the plain mould.