The Basics of Stovetop Puddings, Custards, and Mousses
Few things are more comforting than pudding: sweet and velvet-smooth but still humble and homely. Pudding can be used to refer to a lot of things—in England, for instance, you can find sticky toffee pudding (a cake) and black pudding (a type of blood sausage)—but think of it here as an umbrella term for those thick, custardy desserts you eat with a spoon. There are many ways to give that signature thickness, including eggs, cornstarch and other starches, grains, bread, or a combination—and they’re all laid out in this section.
Related to puddings and also included here are mousses and soufflés. Mousses are both rich and cloudlike, not cooked, and usually get their volume from whipped egg whites or whipped cream. Soufflés, which appear later in this chapter and are like a cross between custard and mousse, are almost always baked and have rich, velvet centers and impressive, billowing tops.
EGG-THICKENED
A pudding with a cooked egg-and-cream base is called a custard (custards can also be sauces, like Crème Anglaise, or Zabaglione). Gently cooked eggs lend a silken texture and rich, gentle flavor unmatched by anything else. There’s no real trick to cooking eggs for these recipes other than to tell you what you don’t want: overcooked eggs, which are essentially scrambled. To avoid turning your dessert into breakfast, you must cook eggs at a relatively low heat just until they thicken, to make them smooth and uniform.
If you’re cooking on the stovetop, as you will with most soft custards, this isn’t a big hurdle; in some recipes, you’ll also temper raw eggs by very gradually adding warm liquid to them, whisking vigorously and constantly, until they’ve reached a stable temperature.
Note that this chapter contains several recipes that call for raw or undercooked eggs. If you are cooking for someone very old, very young, pregnant, or whose immune system is otherwise compromised, you should avoid those recipes unless you can find pasteurized eggs in the shell (see page 21 for more information).
STARCH-THICKENED
You might skip the eggs in your pudding to let the other flavors shine through, to make a vegan dessert, or just to simplify your recipe. Cornstarch is usually your best bet—simple, reliable, and (as long as you cook it for a few minutes) neutrally flavored. The only recipe I don’t use it for is tapioca pudding, because tapioca itself is a thickener.
The best way to avoid clumps when using powdered starch thickeners is to make a slurry: Combine them with water or a few spoonfuls of the cooking liquid. Use just enough liquid to dissolve the thickener and smooth out the lumps with a spoon so that the consistency is like a thin paste. (Again, the exception is tapioca pudding, which uses tapioca pearls rather than powder.) If you’re using cornstarch, you’ll want to cook the pudding a bit after adding the thickener to eliminate its raw flavor and activate the thickening process.
Gelled desserts have a distinct texture that we all remember from childhood (hello, Jell-O). Gelatin works best to create gelées or panna cottas because it gels clear, but you can also use granulated agar (a form of dehydrated seaweed) or arrowroot. You can find gelatin in powder, sheets, or bars; powder is by far the easiest and most straightforward to use. You must first let it “bloom” by sprinkling it over cold liquid in an even layer and leaving it alone for a few minutes, then dissolve it with warm liquid.
Coating the Back of a Spoon
If you’re cooking a pudding or custard on the stove, the best way to know when it’s done is to dip a spoon into the liquid and drag the tip of your finger across the back. If the liquid is opaque and coats and clings to the back of the spoon, forming a distinct trail from where your fingertip was, it’s properly thickened. If the liquid just slides right off the spoon, or your finger trail is covered quickly by runny liquid, keep cooking.
Recipes