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Caramel Custard
Put four ounces of loaf sugar and one gill of water into a saucepan, and let them boil quickly without stirring until the syrup becomes a dark coffee colour. Pour this quickly round some small dry moulds, when it will immediately harden. Beat together the yolks of four eggs and the whites of two, but do not froth them. Add half a pint of milk and half a table-spoonful of castor sugar, and flavour with vanilla. Pour into the moulds. Steam them very gently until set. Turn out carefully, and serve hot or cold. Cost, about 10d. for six.
A small, rich baked-cream custard in the French style, set in caramel-lined moulds. The whole thing hinges on gentle heat: this ratio of egg to milk sets easily, and anything approaching a boil will curdle it.
- Keep the steam lazyThe custard is set by heat around 175-180F, so the water beneath should barely tremble, not roll. Covered small moulds take roughly 20-30 minutes; the custard is done when the centre wobbles as a single mass rather than rippling. A 325F oven with the moulds standing in hot water to two-thirds their depth works equally well if you have no steamer.
- A gillA quarter of an imperial pint, so 5 fl oz, or a little over half a US cup. The half pint of milk is 10 fl oz, about 1 1/4 US cups.
- Loaf sugar and castor sugarLoaf sugar was cut from a hard refined cone; ordinary granulated sugar is the modern equivalent, and 4 oz is a generous half cup. Castor sugar is superfine (caster) sugar, and half a tablespoon is all the sweetening the custard itself gets, since the caramel supplies the rest.
- The caramelBoil the syrup without stirring, as directed, and swirl the pan rather than agitating it. "Dark coffee colour" is the right target for flavour but it is close to burnt: pull the pan off the heat a shade early, because the residual heat carries it further.
- Lining the mouldsThe moulds must be dry and are best warmed slightly, or the caramel seizes into a lump before it coats the sides. Work quickly with one mould at a time; the caramel sets in seconds and will be softened again by the custard and the steam.
- Do not froth the eggsThis matters more than it sounds. Air beaten into the eggs turns into bubbles and a spongy, pitted texture; stir them together only until the yolks and whites are uniform, and strain the mixture into the moulds to catch any thread of albumen.
- VanillaIn Victorian practice this meant infusing a piece of vanilla pod in the warmed milk, or a few drops of essence. If you infuse the pod, cool the milk before adding it to the eggs.
- Yield and turning outSix small dariole moulds, as the costing indicates, or four ramekins. Let them stand a few minutes off the heat before unmoulding; run a knife round the rim and invert onto a plate with a lip, since the dissolved caramel runs freely.
Caramel custard belongs to the family of moulded egg creams that ran through nineteenth-century English cookery under borrowed French names -- crème renversée au caramel when a household wanted to be grand about it, the same thing that survives as crème caramel and, by way of Spain and Latin America, as flan. It demonstrates the basic lesson of egg cookery: a fixed proportion of egg to milk, set by moderate heat, with the yolk-heavy mixture here giving a denser set than a plain baked custard. The costing of about tenpence for six is a reminder of what these books were for; a middle-class housekeeper was expected to know the price of a dish as well as its method, and eggs, milk and sugar made this one of the cheaper ways to end a dinner with something that looked deliberate.