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Coffee Blanc Mange
3 cups scalded milk 1 cup strong coffee + cup sugar 5 tablespoonfuls cornstarch
A cornstarch milk pudding flavoured with leftover breakfast coffee, of the type set in a mould and turned out cold. The quantities are given without a method, so the standard blanc mange technique applies.
- Sugar quantityThe sugar measure has lost its fraction and reads only as part of a cup. For 4 cups of liquid, between a third and a half cup is the usual range; taste the hot mixture before setting, since coffee wants more sugar than plain milk.
- Scalded milkScalding means heating to about 180F, when the surface trembles and a rim of small bubbles forms at the edge, not a rolling boil. With pasteurised milk it is no longer necessary for keeping quality, but the heat helps the starch swell evenly.
- Slurry first, alwaysThe hinge of the dish. Mix the cornstarch smooth with the cold coffee and a little of the milk before it meets anything hot; cornstarch dropped into hot liquid seizes into lumps that no amount of beating will smooth out.
- Cook the starch outOnce thickened, hold it at a bare simmer for two to three minutes, stirring. Undercooked cornstarch tastes chalky and the pudding will weep as it stands.
- Five tablespoons is firmThat is a generous tablespoon and a quarter of cornstarch per cup of liquid, a proportion meant to unmould and hold its shape. For a spooned pudding served in cups, three to four tablespoons gives a softer set.
- Strong coffeeThe recipe specifies only strong coffee, and gives no brewing instruction; boiled or percolated coffee of the kind then usual was often considerably stronger than modern drip. Use a double-strength brew, or add a teaspoon of instant to sharpen it.
- MouldingRinse the mould with cold water and do not grease it. Chill at least four hours, then dip the mould briefly in warm water to release.
- YieldAbout 4 cups of pudding, serving six.
Blanc mange began as a medieval white dish of pounded almonds and rice or capon, and by the nineteenth century had come to mean any sweet moulded pudding set with isinglass, arrowroot or, increasingly, cornstarch. Cornstarch was cheap, reliable and heavily promoted by American manufacturers from the 1850s onward, and it turned the moulded pudding into everyday family cooking rather than a confectioner's showpiece. A coffee version fits the thrifty logic of such puddings, in which a flavoured liquid already to hand could be stirred into milk and set. The same logic produced coffee jellies, coffee custards and coffee icings in books of this kind.