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Pudding
¼ teaspoon salt 4 cups scalded milk ½ cup corn-starch 1/4 cup sugar 1/2 cup cold milk 1 teaspoon vanilla Whites 3 eggs Mix corn-starch, sugar, and salt, dilute with cold milk, add to scalded milk, stirring constantly until mixture thickens, afterwards occasionally; cook fifteen minutes. Add flavoring and whites of eggs beaten stiff, mix thoroughly, mould, chill, and serve with Yellow Sauce I or II.
This is the standard cornstarch blancmange of the Farmer era: a starch-thickened milk pudding lightened with beaten whites and turned out of a mould. A few of the quantities and vessels need translating before you start.
- The cornstarch quantityFor 4 cups of milk, a half cup of cornstarch is the usual proportion for a moulded pudding; a full cup and a half would set like rubber. Treat the amount as half a cup, and understand that the pudding must be stiff enough to unmould, so it will be noticeably firmer than a modern stovetop pudding.
- SaltRead this as 1/4 teaspoon. It is there for flavour, not texture, and the pudding is flat without it.
- Scalded milkHeat the milk to about 180F, until it steams and a ring of fine bubbles forms at the edge, then stop. Scalding is usually explained as a way of destroying enzymes and bacteria in raw milk; with pasteurized milk it mainly speeds the thickening and helps dissolve the sugar.
- Cook fifteen minutesThis is not an error. Cornstarch needs prolonged cooking to lose its raw, chalky taste, and the long hold also lets the starch granules swell fully so the pudding sets clean. Use a double boiler or the heaviest saucepan you own over low heat, and stir the bottom and corners; a direct flame will scorch the milk in far less than fifteen minutes.
- The beaten whitesFold them in while the starch base is still hot, off the heat, and work quickly so they are cooked by the residual heat rather than merely stirred in cold. If you are serving anyone who should avoid undercooked egg, use pasteurized whites, since the pudding is chilled from this point and never heated again.
- Moulding and chillingRinse the mould with cold water and do not dry it; the film of water is what lets the pudding slide out. Chill at least four hours, or overnight. Dip the mould briefly in hot water and invert onto a cold plate.
- YieldSix to eight servings; the mixture runs to more than a quart, so use a mould of at least a quart and a half.
Puddings of this kind sit at the junction of two older traditions: the French blancmange, originally set with almonds and isinglass, and the English boiled milk pudding. Cheap manufactured cornstarch, generally said to have become widely available in American groceries around the mid-nineteenth century, replaced both gelatine and long-cooked rice as the thickener of choice, and the starch companies pushed recipes like this one hard in their packaging and pamphlets. The result was a dessert that cost very little, used no oven, and could be built entirely from staples on hand, which is why Fannie Farmer gives so many variations of it. The economy runs deeper than it looks: the whites go into the pudding and the yolks into the sauce that is served over it, so nothing is wasted.