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Custard Baked in a Crust
Line a pie-dish with a good crust, and put it in the oven until it is three parts cooked. Make a custard as in the last recipe, using milk instead of cream, but do not put quite so large a proportion of milk, to ensure its being quite stiff. Bake it gently, and when the custard is set it is done enough. Keep it in a cool place. Turn out before serving. Time, three-quarters of an hour. Probable cost, 1s., for a moderate-sized dish, large enough for four or five persons.
A blind-baked crust filled with a plain baked egg custard. The recipe leans on the preceding one in the book for its proportions, so the numbers below fill that gap.
- The missing custardCassell's assumes you have just read the cream custard above it. A workable baked-custard ratio is 4 whole eggs (or 3 eggs plus 2 yolks) to 1 pint of milk, with 2-3 oz sugar and a little vanilla or lemon zest. The instruction to use less milk than the cream version simply means erring on the firm side so the tart will hold a cut edge.
- Bake it gently means 300-325FBake it gently -- Egg custard sets between 170F and 180F; above that the proteins tighten and weep. The book names no oven temperature, but "gently" points to a slow oven -- roughly 300-325F in a modern one. A fierce heat curdles the filling and leaves it grainy and watery.
- Three parts cookedBlind-bake the lined dish at 400F for about 15 minutes with beans or weights, then a further 5-10 minutes uncovered until dry and pale gold but not coloured through. Brushing the hot base with a little beaten egg white seals it against the custard.
- Strain and skimPass the custard through a sieve into the shell and lift off any foam with a spoon. Bubbles bake into pits on the surface, and stray chalazae give the set an uneven texture.
- When it is doneThree-quarters of an hour is right for a moderate dish at low heat, but judge by the wobble: the outer two inches should be set and the centre still trembling as a whole, not liquid. It firms as it cools.
- Turning outVictorian pie-dishes were commonly deep earthenware, and the instruction to "turn out" means the tart was inverted or eased out whole. A modern loose-bottomed tart tin makes this far easier; a fixed ceramic dish is best served in slices from the dish.
- Cool place, not cold"Keep it in a cool place" meant a larder. An egg-and-milk custard should go into the refrigerator once cool and be eaten within two days; let it come back toward room temperature for twenty minutes before serving so the pastry is not clammy.
- Cost and yieldOne shilling for four or five people is a modest sum for a sweet dish. A 9-inch tart on the proportions above serves six comfortably.
Baked custard in pastry is a long-established English sweet, descending from the medieval crustade or custarde -- a word that originally named the crust rather than the filling, from Old French crouste. By the nineteenth century it had become one of the plainest of household puddings, and Cassell's treats it accordingly: it appears not among the showpieces but as a variation on a cream custard, with milk substituted for cream. Cream was expensive and perishable; milk was daily and cheap, and the compiler's note to reduce the quantity slightly suggests an awareness that a milk custard sets less readily than a cream one. The dictionary's habit of quoting a "probable cost" for every dish reflects a readership of middle-class housekeepers budgeting a week's table, for whom a pudding that fed five for a shilling was information as useful as the method.