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Cream Filling
Take one-half pint of milk; one tablespoon of cornstarch; two tablespoons of sugar; one egg (yolk); one-half saltspoon of salt; two teaspoons of vanilla; one-half teaspoon of . butter. Measure the cornstarch evenly across the spoon, and put with it two tablespoons of the milk. Add to the beaten yolk of the egg two tablespoons of the milk, and beat well with a fork; then put these two mixtures together. Place the rest of the milk on the fire in a small saucepan set in another containing boiling water, and when the milk is boiling, stir into it the cornstarch mixture. Stir the whole until smooth, and let it cook four minutes, stirring all the time. Add the salt, sugar and butter as soon as the cornstarch is thoroughly stirred in. Then remove from the fire, stir a moment to cool the liquid somewhat, add the vanilla, and use.
This is a plain pastry cream, thickened mostly with cornstarch and enriched with a single yolk. It comes together in about ten minutes and behaves exactly like the modern version.
- The measurementsHalf a pint of milk is one cup (240 ml). A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so half a saltspoon is a scant pinch. The half teaspoon of butter is a very small quantity, most likely for gloss rather than richness; a little more can be added without harm.
- The double boiler"A small saucepan set in another containing boiling water" is a bain-marie. It is genuine insurance against scorching and curdling, but a heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium-low heat with steady stirring works and is faster. Over direct heat the cornstarch will need to reach a full bubble to thicken properly.
- Cook it longer than four minutesFour minutes over water is the minimum. Cornstarch loses its raw, chalky taste and reaches full thickening power only when the mixture actually boils and holds there briefly - look for large slow bubbles breaking the surface, then keep stirring for another minute. Underheated, the filling may set loosely.
- Vanilla off the heatAlcohol-based extract loses aroma in a hot pan. Adding it after the pan leaves the fire, as directed, preserves more of the flavour.
- Strain and coverPass the finished cream through a fine sieve to catch any set egg, then press plastic wrap or buttered paper directly onto the surface. Otherwise it forms a skin that will not stir back in smoothly.
- Yield and useAbout one cup — enough to fill a single layer of an 8- or 9-inch cake, or a batch of cream puffs. Chill it thoroughly before spreading; warm, it will run out the sides.
Cream fillings of this kind sit between two older traditions: the egg-thickened crème pâtissière of French pastry and the cheap, quick cornstarch puddings that spread through American kitchens in the second half of the nineteenth century, once refined corn starch became a cheap grocery staple. The single yolk here is telling — this is a pastry cream reduced to its most economical form, with starch doing much of the work that eggs would do in a richer version. The fussy precision of the instructions — measure the cornstarch level across the spoon, slake it with two tablespoons of milk first, beat the yolk with a fork — reflects the domestic-science movement then reshaping American cookery writing, which held that a recipe should be reproducible by someone who had never seen the dish made.