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Raspberry Blanc-Mange
Stew nice fresh raspberries, strain off the juice and sweeten it to taste, place over the fire, and when it boils stir in corn starch wet in cold water, allowing two table-spoons of corn starch for each pint of juice; continue stirring until sufficiently cooked, pour into molds wet in cold water and set away to cool; eat with cream and sugar. Other fruit can be used instead of raspberries. -Mrs. J. P. Rea, Minneapolis, Minn.
A fruit-juice cornstarch pudding, unmolded and served cold. It is simple, but the starch ratio and the boil are what decide whether it sets or slumps.
- The hinge: cook the starch outCornstarch needs to reach a boil to thicken fully, and it tastes raw and chalky until it has bubbled for a minute or two. "Continue stirring until sufficiently cooked" means keep it at a slow boil, stirring, until the mixture turns glossy rather than cloudy.
- Starch ratioTwo tablespoons per pint of juice is roughly 16 g per 475 ml — a soft, spoonable set that will just hold a mold shape. For a firmer turn-out that stands up on a plate, go to three tablespoons per pint.
- Wet the starch first"Wet in cold water" is a slurry: stir the cornstarch into two or three tablespoons of cold water until smooth before it goes near the hot juice, or it will seize into lumps.
- Acid and starchRaspberry juice is quite acidic, and prolonged boiling in acid breaks cornstarch down and thins the set. Bring it to the boil, cook it out briefly, and take it off — do not simmer it for ten minutes hoping for a stiffer result.
- Getting the juiceStew about 1.5 lb (700 g) of raspberries with a splash of water until collapsed, then strain through a sieve or jelly bag for roughly a pint of juice. Press hard for yield or let it drip for clarity; pressed juice makes a cloudier blanc-mange.
- Wet moldsRinsing the molds in cold water and leaving them wet is the release trick — the film of water keeps the pudding from gripping the metal. It works; skip the oil or butter.
- Chilling"Set away to cool" meant a cold larder. Give it at least four hours in the refrigerator, covered, before turning out.
- YieldA pint of juice makes roughly four small molds or one 2-cup mold, serving four.
Blanc-mange began as a medieval European dish of pounded almonds, capon and rice — the name is Old French for "white food" — but by the nineteenth century it had drifted into meaning any molded, starch- or gelatin-set milk pudding, and then, as here, any molded pudding at all. Coloring one bright red with raspberry juice and dropping the milk entirely turns the name into a fossil. Cornstarch is the reason this version exists: commercial corn starch became widely available in American kitchens from the mid-1800s and was heavily promoted as a cheap, reliable thickener. The Dixie Cook-Book gathered contributions from housekeepers by name and city, and Mrs. Rea's tag line "other fruit can be used instead" is characteristic of the genre — a formula rather than a single dish, meant to absorb whatever the summer had produced.