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Delmonico Pudding
A quart milk, three table-spoons corn-starch dissolved in cold milk, the yolks of five eggs beaten well, six table-spoons sugar. Boil three or four minutes, pour into a pudding-dish and bake about half an hour; beat whites of eggs with six table-spoons sugar, put over top, and return pudding to oven until it is a delicate brown.- Mrs. J. Holland,
A cornstarch-thickened boiled custard, baked and finished with meringue. The whole thing hangs on how the yolks meet the heat.
- Temper the yolksCook the milk and cornstarch to a boil first so the starch gelatinizes and loses its raw taste, then whisk a ladle of the hot mixture into the beaten yolks before returning them to the pan. Adding yolks to a full boil directly will scramble them, and the recipe's compressed wording hides that step.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives no temperature at all, only 'about half an hour'. A moderate oven, around 350F, is a reasonable modern reading: half an hour at that heat sets a quart of custard in a shallow two-quart dish; a deep dish will want closer to 40 minutes.
- Judging donenessThe center should still tremble slightly when the dish is nudged; an instant-read thermometer will show about 170-175F. Baked until firm all through, it will be grainy by the time it cools.
- MeasurementsA quart is 4 cups. Three tablespoons cornstarch to a quart of milk gives a soft spoonable set, not a sliceable one. Period 'table-spoons' were not standardised and may have been rounded rather than level; read literally, six tablespoons is 3/8 cup in the custard and the same again in the meringue.
- The meringueSix tablespoons of sugar to five whites is lean by current practice, where two tablespoons per white is standard. Beat to soft peaks, add the sugar gradually, and spread it onto the pudding while the pudding is still hot so the underside cooks and does not weep.
- BrowningAt 350F the meringue needs 12-15 minutes to color. Sealing the meringue to the rim of the dish all the way round keeps it from shrinking into an island as it cools.
- FlavoringThe original gives none. A teaspoon of vanilla, or lemon zest steeped in the milk, suits the pudding; add it off the heat at the end.
- Yield and servingServes six to eight. Best barely warm or at room temperature; refrigerate leftovers, though the meringue will slump and weep by the next day.
Through the second half of the nineteenth century the name Delmonico's, the New York restaurant that set the standard for American fine dining, was attached to all manner of home dishes that had never been near its kitchen. It functioned as a mark of aspiration, much as "chef's" or "gourmet" would later. This pudding is a cornstarch custard with a meringue lid, a close relative of queen of puddings and of the countless "cup custards" in the same chapter, its claim to elegance resting on the separated eggs and the browned top rather than on any costly ingredient. Cornstarch itself was still a relatively new convenience in American kitchens, commercially manufactured from the 1840s onward and heavily promoted as a cheaper, more reliable thickener than arrowroot. Like many entries in The Dixie Cook Book, this one carries a contributor's name, the compiled-community format that seems to have been widespread in American cookbook publishing after the Civil War.