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Vanilla Blanc Mange
3 cups milk 1/2 cup Karo, Red Label 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup Argo or Kingsford's Cornstarch 1/2 cup cold water 1/2 teaspoon vanilla Scald the milk and Karo, add the cornstarch, salt and water, stirred smooth, and cook over hot water for twenty minutes at least, stirring occasionally. Flavor, mould, chill and serve.
A cornstarch pudding stiff enough to unmould, from a promotional booklet issued by the makers of Karo, Argo and Kingsford's. It works as written; a few of the terms and proportions need translating.
- Cook over hot waterThis means a double boiler, not direct heat. The full twenty minutes matters: cornstarch thickens within a few minutes but tastes raw and chalky until the starch is fully cooked out, and gentle indirect heat keeps the milk from catching.
- Karo Red LabelKaro was sold in several grades; Red Label was the darker, more strongly flavoured one, Blue Label the light. Light corn syrup gives the cleaner white pudding the name implies; dark corn syrup will give more colour and a faint molasses note.
- That much cornstarch is deliberateHalf a cup to three cups of milk is roughly double what a spoon pudding needs. This is a moulding blanc mange, meant to be turned out and to hold its shape, so it sets firm rather than creamy.
- Slurry first"Stirred smooth" applies to the cornstarch and cold water, which must be whisked to a lump-free slurry before it goes into the hot milk. Cornstarch dropped dry into hot liquid seizes instantly.
- Vanilla goes in last"Flavor, mould" is the correct order. Extract stirred in off the heat keeps its aroma; added at the start of a twenty-minute cook, some of it will be lost.
- MouldingRinse the mould with cold water and do not dry it, so the pudding releases. Press plastic wrap or buttered paper onto the surface while it chills or a rubbery skin forms.
- Chilling and yieldAllow at least four hours in the refrigerator for a set firm enough to unmould. Three cups of milk makes about a quart, serving four to six.
This comes from an advertising cookbook put out by the Corn Products Refining Company, whose Karo syrup, Argo cornstarch and Kingsford's cornstarch appear by brand name in nearly every formula — the recipes exist to sell the tins. Blanc mange itself is far older than the brands: the name is Old French for "white food," and the medieval dish it descends from was a pounded almond and capon pottage, sweet and white, that gradually lost its meat and became a milk pudding thickened by various means — isinglass, Irish moss, arrowroot or rice flour among them — and later, as manufactured cornstarch became cheap and widespread through the nineteenth century, with starch. That shift is what put the dish within reach of ordinary households and plausibly why a starch manufacturer had an interest in printing it. Filed here under Supper, it belongs to the light evening meal of the period, when a moulded pudding turned out onto a glass dish was a respectable end to a plain table.