Orange Cream
Take the juice of six oranges and the grated rind of two, put them into a stew pan or farina kettle with one pint and one half of water and twelve ounces of sugar, white, stir till the sugar is well dissolved, then add the beaten whites of six eggs, stir over a slow fire till it thickens, then strain through a hair sieve or muslin and stir until cold; put back into the kettle and add the yolks of the eggs well beaten, stir over the fire until the mixture begins to simmer, then pour into a basin and stir again. When a little cool place in individual glasses.
An egg-thickened orange custard with no dairy in it at all. The whole recipe hinges on heat control: the mixture must thicken but never boil, or the egg proteins will curdle into threads that no amount of straining will fix.
- Farina kettleA farina kettle is a double boiler — an inner pan set over water in an outer one. The recipe allows a plain stew pan as well, but a heatproof bowl over barely simmering water gives the gentler indirect heat and makes scrambling the eggs much harder.
- The temperature to watchEgg white begins to coagulate at roughly 145-150F and yolk at roughly 150-160F, so both stages are vulnerable. Pull the mixture off the heat as soon as it coats a spoon; the second stage need go no further than about 175F, just as the surface begins to move. "Begins to simmer" in a thin custard is already the edge of failure.
- Sugar and liquidTwelve ounces of white sugar is about 1 3/4 cups. A pint and a half of water is 3 cups. The result is a light, pourable cream rather than a set custard, sweet-tart and closer to a drinking consistency than a modern pot de creme.
- Slow fireOn gas, the lowest flame that keeps the water beneath at a lazy simmer. On induction or electric, a setting of 2-3 out of 10. Nothing here benefits from speed.
- Hair sieveA sieve of woven horsehair, fine and non-reactive. A nylon or stainless mesh strainer does the same job; muslin or a double layer of cheesecloth is the finer option and catches the grated rind as well as any set threads of white.
- The rindGrate only the coloured zest of two oranges, avoiding the white pith, which is bitter. Modern supermarket citrus is usually waxed — scrub in warm water and dry before grating.
- Stirring until coldBoth stirring-off-heat instructions serve to let steam escape, discourage a skin from forming, and keep the texture even as the mixture cools. Skipping them risks a skinned surface and an uneven body.
- YieldThe quantities add up to something nearer 5 or 6 cups of finished cream, enough for a good many small glasses. Chill thoroughly before serving; it is best the day it is made.
In eighteenth- and nineteenth-century cookery, "cream" often described the texture of a dish rather than its contents — a smooth, spoonable or sippable sweet, thickened with eggs, isinglass or arrowroot as readily as with dairy. Orange creams of this kind appear in English recipe books throughout the period, usually built on the same three moves found here: citrus juice and zest for flavour, sugar for body, and eggs whisked in over gentle heat to thicken. The two-stage method, whites first and yolks after straining, is a careful one: it removes any set fragments of white before the more delicate yolks go in. Oranges, meanwhile, appear freely in English dessert recipes of the period, and six of them for a single dish of pudding would not have been out of the ordinary.