Home › Sauce › A Cornstarch Pudding
A Cornstarch Pudding
Many kinds of pudding can be made with this recipe by adding different flavorings. I consider it a success; besides, it is very easily and quickly made. It may or may not be served with a boiled custard made with the yolks of the eggs.
Ingredients: One pint of rich milk, two tablespoonfuls of corn starch, a scant half cupful of sugar, whites of three eggs, a little salt, flavoring. Beat the eggs to a stiff froth. Dissolve the cornstarch in a little of the cold milk. Stir the sugar into the remainder of the milk, which place on the fire. When it begins to boil, add the dissolved cornstarch. Stir constantly for a few moments, when it will become a smooth paste; now stir in the beaten whites of the eggs. Remove from the fire. It can be flavored and put into a form; yet it is still better as a
A plain blancmange-style cornstarch pudding, lightened with beaten whites. The text breaks off mid-sentence at the bottom of the page, so the author's preferred final form — almost certainly served soft, in glasses, rather than moulded — is lost.
- The hinge: whites go in off the heat, or nearly soStir the stiff whites into the thickened starch while it is still very hot, working quickly so they melt into the base rather than setting in lumps, then pull the pan off the burner. Held over direct heat the whites curdle and the pudding turns grainy.
- MeasuresA pint is 2 cups of milk. A "scant half cupful" of sugar is about 7 tablespoons, so the pudding is only mildly sweet.
- Cornstarch strengthTwo tablespoons per pint gives a soft set; the recipe says it can be put into a form, though with this proportion the turned-out shape will be a delicate one.
- "Rich milk"Nineteenth-century milk was unhomogenised and sold with the cream in. Whole milk works; whole milk with 2 tablespoons of cream stirred in is nearer the original.
- Dissolving the starchSlake the cornstarch in a few tablespoons of the cold milk before it meets anything hot, as directed — dropped dry into hot milk it seizes into knots that will not stir out.
- FlavoringThe period default is vanilla or a little lemon; almond extract, rose water and grated chocolate all appear in books of this date. Add it after the pan comes off the heat so it does not cook away.
- The custard sauceThe three leftover yolks make the "boiled custard" — yolks, milk, sugar, stirred over low heat until it coats a spoon, roughly 170-180F. It must not boil or it scrambles, despite the name.
- YieldServes four as written, or six in small glasses with the sauce poured over.
Cornstarch puddings filled a specific niche in American cooking from the mid-nineteenth century onward: commercial cornstarch, refined from maize and sold in boxes, gave home cooks a cheap and reliable thickener where earlier blancmanges had depended on isinglass, calf's-foot jelly or more expensive arrowroot. Manufacturers promoted it heavily, and by the end of the century the moulded cornstarch pudding was a common everyday sweet — quick, thrifty, and forgiving. The split use of the eggs here fits a habit of household economy: whites lighten the pudding, yolks become the sauce, nothing is thrown out.