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Snow Ball Custard
Beat the whites of six eggs to a froth very stiff, and sweeten with four tablespoons of fine sugar. Drop them by tablespoonfuls into a kettle of boiling water for two minutes to stiffen them. Skim out into a glass dish. Take a quart of new milk, three tablespoonfuls sugar, and the beaten yolks of six eggs, and stir into the yolks when the milk boils, having placed the pail in boil ing water. Beat for eight minutes. Flavor with vanilla. When taken from the fire and cooled, strain over the snowballs, and serve with sponge cake or lady fingers.
This is floating island under another name: poached meringue in a stirred custard. Two things decide whether it works, and both are about heat.
- The hinge: never let the custard boilThe "pail in boiling water" is a double boiler, and it is there for a reason. Stir the yolk-and-milk mixture over barely simmering water until it coats a spoon, around 175-180F; much past 185F it begins to curdle, and straining will only catch small threads, not rescue a badly scrambled custard.
- "Beat for eight minutes"Treat this as a description of how long thickening usually takes rather than a fixed time. Stir constantly and judge by the spoon, not the clock, and note the recipe expects you to strain the finished custard anyway, which catches any small threads of set yolk.
- New milkMilk fresh from the cow, unpasteurised and not skimmed, so a little richer than modern whole milk. Whole milk works; adding two or three tablespoons of cream to the quart edges it closer to the original.
- Poaching the whitesWater at a bare simmer, not a rolling boil, or the meringues break up. Two minutes is right for tablespoon-sized quenelles; turn them once, then lift out with a slotted spoon and drain them briefly on a towel so they do not weep into the dish.
- Sugar in the whitesFour tablespoons of superfine sugar for six whites is a soft meringue by modern standards, which is what you want here. Add it a spoonful at a time once the whites hold soft peaks, or they will deflate.
- Assembly and chillingThe custard must be properly cold before it goes over the meringues, otherwise the poached whites collapse. Chill it with a piece of plastic wrap on the surface, then pour it around rather than directly onto the snowballs.
- YieldA quart of custard and six whites serves six to eight in small glasses or shallow bowls. Best eaten the day it is made; the meringues soften overnight.
This is the English-American version of what French cookery calls œufs à la neige, snow eggs, and what nineteenth-century American books also printed as "floating island" — a stirred custard with poached meringue set afloat on it. Its appeal to a household cook was arithmetic as much as taste: one dish used six whole eggs completely, whites for the snowballs and yolks for the custard, with nothing left over at a time when a bowl of spare yolks was a real nuisance. The instruction to set the pail in boiling water suggests that a dedicated double boiler was not standard equipment; a tin pail lowered into a kettle did the same work. Serving it with sponge cake or lady fingers was common advice, since the custard is thin by design and wants something dry beside it.