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Cream, Substitute For
Beat the yolks of two eggs, and mix them with half a pint of milk. Strain the mixture into a saucepan, and stir it until it is heated, but do not let it boil. Sweeten slightly. When cold, it is ready to serve. This may be used either for tea or tarts. Time, a few minutes. Probable cost, 3d. Sufficient for nearly three-quarters of a pint.
A thin stirred custard standing in for cream, from the days when dairy cream was a luxury and milk itself was often watered. It is easy to make and easy to scramble.
- The hinge: heat, do not boilEgg yolks set from about 160F and curdle above roughly 185F. Take the pan to 175-180F on an instant-read thermometer, when the mixture just coats the back of a spoon, then pull it off the heat at once. A double boiler, or a heavy pan over low heat with constant stirring, makes this far easier than direct high heat.
- Half a pintAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups. Whole milk gives the best body; skimmed milk produces something closer to sweetened egg water.
- YieldJust under ¾ imperial pint, roughly 1¾ US cups — enough to pour over two or three tarts, or to whiten five or six cups of tea.
- Strain twiceThe book strains before cooking, to catch bits of chalaza and shell. Strain again after cooking, into a cold bowl, to catch any yolk that has set on the pan bottom. This is what keeps it smooth.
- Sweeten slightlyNo quantity is given. A teaspoon or two of sugar is about right for tea use; go a little higher, say a tablespoon, if it is going over fruit tarts. Sugar also raises the curdling point slightly, so add it at the start rather than the end.
- Cooling and keepingCool it quickly over a bowl of iced water and press a disc of paper or film onto the surface to stop a skin forming. Treat it as you would any fresh custard: refrigerate and use within two days.
- In teaIt behaves differently from cream in hot tea — the extra egg protein can flocculate if the tea is very hot or very tannic. Pour the custard into the cup first, then the tea.
- Probable cost, 3dThree pence for nearly three-quarters of a pint. The economy, not the flavour, is the point of the entry.
This is a household expedient: a way to get the richness of cream out of eggs and milk when cream was expensive, perishable and, in cities, often adulterated. Before mechanical separators and reliable rail-borne dairy deliveries spread through the later nineteenth century, cream in a town kitchen was a treat bought fresh and used the same day, while eggs kept for weeks in a cool larder. What the recipe produces is essentially a very thin crème anglaise, the same yolk-thickened milk that underlies pouring custard and ice cream bases. Similar "mock cream" formulas — some with cornflour or butter instead of yolks — recur in British household manuals right through the two world wars, when cream was rationed or simply unobtainable.