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Cream, Vanilla
Mix the well-beaten yolks of four eggs with a pint and a half of thick cream or new milk, add three table-spoonfuls of sugar, and four or five drops of the essence of vanilla, and last of all the white of one egg beaten to a firm froth. Put the mixture into a jug, place the jug in a saucepan of cold water, and let it simmer gently, stirring the contents of the jug all the time, until the cream thickens. It must on no account boil, or it will be full of lumps. Pour it into custard-glasses, and strew a little finely-sifted sugar on the top of each glass. Sufficient for nearly a quart. Probable cost, 9d. for this quantity, if made with milk.
A stirred custard by another name, cooked in a jug standing in water so it never catches. The method is sound; only the units and the vanilla need translating.
- The hinge: keep it below a simmerThe instruction not to boil is the whole recipe. Egg yolks set between about 170 and 180F; past that they scramble and the custard curdles. Pull it from the heat when it coats the back of a spoon and holds a clean line when you draw a finger through.
- A pint and a half, imperialCassell's pint is 20 fl oz, so this is 30 fl oz of cream or milk — about 3.6 US cups. The yield of "nearly a quart" is likewise imperial: an imperial quart is roughly 5 US cups, and the recipe says the mixture makes a little less than that.
- New milkFresh whole milk, straight from the dairy and not skimmed. Ordinary whole milk stands in; the custard will simply be lighter than the cream version. The price note at the end costs the milk version only.
- Essence of vanillaVictorian essences varied enormously in strength, and four or five drops tells you little. With modern extract, start at a teaspoon for this quantity and taste before it sets. A split pod steeped in the warm milk and strained out is closer to the intended flavour.
- The jug in the saucepanThis is a bain-marie improvised from what a kitchen had. A heatproof bowl over barely simmering water, or a double boiler, does the same job. The water should not touch the base of the bowl and should never come to a rolling boil.
- The beaten whiteFolding in one stiffly beaten white lightens the finished cream and distinguishes it from a plain boiled custard. Add it off the heat at the very end if you want the froth to survive; stirred through hot custard it largely dissolves.
- InsurancePass the thickened custard through a fine sieve into the glasses. It catches any threads of set egg and the chalazae, and costs nothing.
- ServingChill for two to three hours before the sugar goes on top; sifted sugar strewn early will simply dissolve. Fills six to eight small custard glasses.
The recipe is flavoured with vanilla rather than the older English standbys of bay leaf, orange-flower water or bitter almond. Vanilla was still an expensive import in the later nineteenth century, and the recipe calls carefully for "four or five drops". The costing at the end — ninepence for nearly a quart, and only if made with milk — was a standard feature of Cassell's, telling a household before committing whether a sweet was within the week's allowance. The jug-in-a-saucepan trick, meanwhile, is the domestic version of the bain-marie, serving a kitchen that had no purpose-made double vessel.