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Pineapple Pudding
2¾ cups scalded milk 1/4 cup cold milk 1/3 cup corn-starch 1/4 cup sugar ¼ teaspoon salt 1/2 can grated pineapple Whites 3 eggs.
Follow directions for Rebecca Pudding, and add pineapple just before moulding. Fill individual moulds, previously dipped in cold water. Serve with cream. 2 cups milk ½ cup sugar 1/3 cup boiling water 1 junket tablet
A cornstarch blancmange lightened with beaten egg whites and folded with canned pineapple, set in small moulds. It depends on the companion recipe for Rebecca Pudding, which is a stirred stovetop pudding rather than a baked one.
- The quantitiesRead the milk as 2 3/4 cups scalded plus 1/4 cup cold milk to slake the cornstarch, and the salt as 1/4 teaspoon. The 1/3 cup cornstarch is correct and is what makes the pudding firm enough to unmould.
- The method it points toRebecca Pudding is not printed here; the standard form of such a pudding is to scald the milk, stir in the cornstarch smoothed with the cold milk, add sugar and salt, and cook over hot water until thick and no longer tasting raw, then fold in the stiffly beaten whites and cook briefly so they set. Check the companion recipe for the exact timings.
- The hingeAdd the pineapple only after the pudding is off the heat and just before filling the moulds, as written. Stirring the wet, acidic fruit in earlier is likely to loosen the set.
- Half a canCan sizes varied, so treat this as roughly a cup of well-drained fruit and adjust. Use canned or otherwise cooked pineapple; raw fruit is not what the recipe assumes.
- Moulds dipped in cold waterWetting the moulds is what lets the pudding release cleanly, in place of oiling. Small ramekins or teacups work; chill until fully cold and firm.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; expect enough to fill several small individual moulds. Serve with cream, as directed.
- No oven involvedNothing here is baked. A double boiler or a heavy pan over low heat with constant stirring is the whole of the equipment.
Cornstarch puddings were a workhorse cold dessert in America in this period: cheap, and firm enough to turn out of a mould in the shape of the vessel, which mattered a great deal to a period that prized the look of a moulded dish. The pineapple is the modern note. Canned pineapple was becoming more widely and cheaply available towards the end of the century, and the book folds it into puddings, sherbets and salads with the ease of a cook who no longer has to think of it as a luxury. Junket tablets, made from rennet, belong to the same family of set milk desserts and appear a few entries away in this section.