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Charlotte Pudding
Miss L. Stagman.
Heat three pints of milk to a boiling point; stir into it the yolks of eight eggs well beaten, and one large tablespoonful of corn starch; let it then thicken a little, and sweeten and flavour to taste. Lay slices of sponge cake in a pudding dish; pour over the pudding; add to the top of it the whites of eight eggs well beaten, and flavour with lemon; then set it in the oven to brown lightly. To be eaten cold.
A baked custard poured over sponge cake and capped with meringue — closer to a trifle than to the molded charlottes the name suggests. The whole thing turns on keeping the custard below a simmer once the yolks go in.
- The hinge: never boil the yolksThe hinge: keep the yolks below a simmer -- The recipe has you stir the beaten yolks and cornstarch straight into milk brought to the boiling point; gentler is to take the pan off the heat first and ladle a cup of the hot milk into the yolks to temper them. Returned to low heat and stirred, it should thicken to a coating consistency at about 175-180F; much past that and it risks curdling, though the spoonful of cornstarch gives it some protection.
- Three pints of milkIf you read this as US pints, 6 cups (1.4 L). The book was published in Canada, where an imperial pint is 20 oz, giving about 60 fl oz, roughly 1.7 L or a little over 7 cups — either works, the larger quantity simply makes a looser custard.
- One tablespoon of cornstarch is deliberateOne tablespoon of cornstarch is very little -- That is a small amount of starch for six cups of milk. It reads more as insurance against curdling than as the thickener; the eight yolks do most of the work. Increasing it much pushes the dish towards blancmange.
- SweeteningNo quantity is given; the recipe sweetens and flavours after the custard has thickened. About 3/4 cup sugar for six cups of milk gives a custard of ordinary Victorian sweetness. Vanilla, nutmeg or lemon rind would all be plausible flavourings for the custard itself.
- The meringueEight whites beaten plain will weep and slide. Beat in about 1/2 cup sugar, a tablespoon at a time, once they hold soft peaks, then the lemon flavouring; the sugar is what lets the meringue sit overnight without collapsing into syrup.
- "Set it in the oven to brown lightly"No temperature is given. A moderate oven, around 350F for 12-15 minutes, will tan the peaks. A hotter oven browns faster but gives the custard beneath a second cooking, which may be where a watery layer at the bottom of the dish comes from.
- The cakeDay-old sponge slices absorb the custard without disintegrating, though the recipe says only 'sponge cake'. Ladyfingers substitute cleanly; a very fat-rich crumb tends to stay greasy rather than soaking.
- Yield and servingServes 8 to 10 in a 9x13 dish or a deep 2 1/2-quart baking dish. Cool at room temperature, then chill; the custard needs several hours to set enough to spoon out cleanly. Meringue toughens after a day, so it is best eaten the same evening or the next.
By the 1870s "charlotte" had loosened into a name for almost any dessert built around a lining of cake or bread — from the baked apple charlotte of English kitchens to the chilled charlotte russe of sponge fingers and Bavarian cream, generally credited to Antonin Carême in the early nineteenth century. This one keeps only the sponge cake and abandons the mold entirely, which makes it a boiled custard poured over cake and browned, a dish close to what other households of the same decade called trifle, cabinet pudding or queen of puddings. The contributor's name attached to the recipe is typical of The Home Cook Book, compiled from the contributions of Canadian and American housekeepers and sold for charity, where a signature carried the weight that a tested measurement carries now.