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Chopped Apricot Pudding
3 cups canned chopped apri cots and their juice 3 tablespoons Karo, Red Label Few grains salt Juice 1/2 lemon. 1/2 cup Argo or Kingsford's Cornstarch 1 egg white Bring the fruit and Karo to boiling point. Add the salt and thicken with the cornstarch mixed with one-fourth cup cold water.
Cook twenty minutes at least over hot water and add the lemon juice. Pour while boiling into the egg white whipped stiff. Chill in a mould first rinsed with cold water.
A cornstarch mould in the blancmange family, stiff enough to turn out of a form and lightened with a beaten white. Two things decide whether it works: the long cooking over water, and the fact that it must be poured hot.
- Cook the starch out properlyThe twenty minutes over hot water is not padding. Half a cup of cornstarch left underdone tastes chalky and raw, and the double boiler prevents scorching in a mixture this thick. Stir until it is glossy rather than cloudy.
- "Over hot water" means a double boilerSet the pan in a second pan of simmering water, or use a metal bowl over one. Direct heat on a starch paste this stiff will catch on the bottom within a minute or two.
- Karo, Red LabelCorn Products sold Karo in colour-coded labels; Red Label was the darker, more strongly flavoured grade, Blue Label the pale crystal one. Three tablespoons of ordinary light or dark corn syrup will do the same work here.
- Argo and Kingsford'sBoth were the company's own cornstarch brands and are interchangeable with any plain cornstarch. Mix it smooth with the quarter cup of cold water before it goes near the hot fruit.
- The canned apricotsModern cans are packed in syrup or juice and run smaller than old No. 2 tins. Drain, chop the halves, then combine fruit and juice to make a full 3 cups; if it is packed in heavy syrup, cut the corn syrup back.
- Pour while boilingThe hot starch mixture is what sets and partially cooks the egg white, so it has to go into the whipped white immediately and be folded fast. If the pudding has cooled, the white will simply deflate and streak. If you are serving anyone who should avoid undercooked egg, use a pasteurized white.
- UnmouldingRinsing the mould with cold water and leaving it wet is what lets the pudding slip free; do not butter it. Chill at least four hours, or overnight, then dip the mould briefly in warm water and invert.
- Yield and servingMakes about a quart, six modest servings. Cold moulds of this kind were commonly served with thin cream or a soft custard, or on their own.
This comes from one of the promotional cookbooks issued by the Corn Products Refining Company, which is why every branded ingredient in the list belongs to the same firm: Karo syrup and both Argo and Kingsford's cornstarch. Booklets like it were given away or sold for a few cents in the early twentieth century, and their function was to show housekeepers how many dishes a box of cornstarch could produce. The dish itself is a cornstarch mould, the American descendant of blancmange, which in the nineteenth century had shifted from an almond-and-gelatine dessert to a starch-thickened pudding turned out of a decorative form. Its suitability for supper is telling: a cold, sweet, mouldable pudding made from canned fruit and a pantry starch was exactly the kind of thing a cook could make in the morning and set on the table at night without further work.