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Chocolate Cornstarch
One pint of milk; one tablespoon of cornstarch; two tablespoons of sugar; two eggs (yolks); one-fourth teaspoon salt; one teaspoon vanilla; one-half teaspoon of butter. Beat the yolks of the eggs and add to them a little of the milk; then wet the cornstarch with a small quantity of the milk and stir the two mixtures together. Place the rest of the milk on the fire in a milk-boiler and when boiling stir in the cornstarch, eggs, etc. Let the whole cook five minutes, add the salt, sugar and butter and remove from the fire; pour the pudding into a pudding-dish and when partly cooled add the flavoring, stirring it in well.
For the Chocolate-One-half cup of milk; one-half cup of grated chocolate; three tablespoons of sugar; one tablespoon of vanilla; two eggs (whites). Place the milk and chocolate together in a small saucepan set in another containing hot water and cook until the chocolate is smooth and thick-generally about five minutesstirring all the time. Add the sugar, remove from the fire, stir until cooled and put in the vanilla. Spread the chocolate mixture carefully, a spoonful at a time, over the cornstarch in the dish. Beat the whites of the eggs stiff, add one tablespoon of sugar and two or three drops of vanilla, spread this icing on top of the chocolate and brown delicately in the oven This pudding should be in three layers when finished-first the cornstarch, then the chocolate, and then the browned whites of the eggs.
A three-layer pudding assembled hot: a soft cornstarch custard, a chocolate paste spooned over it, and a meringue browned on top. Two points decide whether it works — keeping the layers distinct, and not overbaking the meringue.
- The hinge: build in layers, not swirlsSpoon the chocolate over the cornstarch a spoonful at a time, as directed, and do not spread with pressure. The base is a soft set at this ratio, and any stirring turns the whole thing into ordinary chocolate pudding.
- Milk-boilerA milk-boiler is a double boiler — a lidded pan set over a second pan of water. Any heatproof bowl over simmering water does the job for both the custard and the chocolate.
- Grated chocolateThis means unsweetened block chocolate grated on a box grater; half a cup lightly packed is roughly 2 oz. Chopped unsweetened baking chocolate works, though it needs a minute longer to smooth out. Cocoa powder is not a substitute here.
- ThickeningOne tablespoon of cornstarch to a pint of milk gives a pourable custard that firms only on chilling, which is what the layering needs. If you want a spoon to stand up in it, use two, but expect a stiffer base that the chocolate sits on rather than settles into.
- That tablespoon of vanillaOne tablespoon in the chocolate layer against one teaspoon in the base looks like a printer's slip for a teaspoon. Use a teaspoon.
- Cooking the custardFive minutes at a bare simmer is right for the starch to lose its raw taste, but stir constantly and add the sugar afterward as written — sugar stirred in early slows the starch from setting.
- Browning the meringueThe recipe asks only that the top be browned delicately, so this is a short spell in a hot oven, watched rather than timed. Spread the meringue right to the rim so it anchors.
- YieldFour modest servings. Serve the same day; the meringue softens overnight and the layers begin to bleed.
Cornstarch puddings filled a specific niche in late nineteenth-century American cooking: cheap, mild, quick, and made from a shelf-stable industrial product that had only been widely available since commercial cornstarch manufacture took hold in the 1840s and 1850s. They were the everyday descendant of blancmange, which had traditionally been set with isinglass, gelatin, or ground almonds and rice. The Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns, issued cookbooks aimed at the same practical middle-class housekeeper who bought its patterns, and a recipe like this one shows the appeal — pantry ingredients and a single quart dish producing something that looks composed and deliberate at the table. The three-layer construction, with a meringue browned on top, is the same logic as lemon meringue pie, which was becoming a fixture in American cookbooks over the same decades.