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Honey Cornstarch Pudding
1-3 Cup Honey 1/4 Teaspoon Salt 41/2 Tablespoons Cornstarch 4 Cups Scalded Milk Mix the honey, salt, and cornstarch.
Stir in the hot milk gradually, stirring until smooth. Stir and cook over boiling water until the mixture thickens. Cover and cook 15 minutes. Turn into a wet mold, chill, and serve with cream.
A plain boiled cornstarch pudding — the blancmange of the American home kitchen — sweetened with honey instead of sugar. It is made in a double boiler and unmolded cold.
- The honey quantityThe amount reads as one-third cup. Honey is sweeter than sugar by weight, so a third of a cup gives a mildly sweet pudding, not a sugary one.
- Cornstarch to milkFour and a half tablespoons of cornstarch to four cups of milk sets a pudding firm enough to unmold and hold its shape. If you want a soft spoon pudding served in cups, drop to about three tablespoons.
- Over boiling waterThis means a double boiler, and it matters here. Cornstarch scorches and the milk catches over direct heat; the water bath keeps the temperature at boiling point and no higher.
- Why the 15 minutesThe mixture thickens within two or three minutes, but raw cornstarch has a chalky taste. The covered quarter hour cooks the starch through. Do not cut it short.
- Add the milk graduallyScalded milk is about 180F. Stirring it slowly into the dry honey-cornstarch mixture prevents lumps; dumping it in at once sets the starch on the outside of each clump.
- A wet moldRinse the mold in cold water and do not dry it. The film of water is what lets the chilled pudding slide out. A mold of at least a quart and a half, or six individual cups, will hold this.
- Chilling and yieldAt least four hours in the refrigerator, preferably overnight. Serves six generously with cream poured over.
- Honey flavorThe honey is the whole point of the dish, so its character carries straight through. A mild clover or orange blossom honey suits it; buckwheat or chestnut will dominate.
Cornstarch puddings filled a specific niche in American home cooking from the mid-nineteenth century onward: cheap, made from pantry staples, and reliable in the hands of an inexperienced cook. Commercial manufacture of cornstarch began in the 1840s, and it was marketed heavily to households thereafter, with manufacturers' pamphlets pushing molded "blanc mange" as its showcase use. The double boiler makes it nearly failure-proof, and the mold turns a bowl of thickened milk into something that can be set on a table. Substituting honey for sugar was common in periods when sugar was dear or rationed, and honey puddings appear in numerous community and wartime collections; the swap changes the flavor, since honey brings its own floral notes where sugar brings none.