Home › The Principles of Cookery › Custard, Boiled
Custard, Boiled
Simmer in a well-lined saucepan a pint each of milk and cream, with a bay-leaf, and the thin rind of half a lemon. Strain the liquid for half an hour, and put it on again with three ounces of sugar. Beat well the yolks of six eggs, and add them gradually to the milk, stirring it carefully and steadily until it thickens. It must not boil, or it will curdle. Pour it into a large jug, and add a glass of brandy, still stirring it until it has cooled a little. Fill cups and serve. Probable cost, 2s. 4d., without brandy.
A stirred custard sauce in the older sense — thin enough to pour into cups and drink, not to unmould. The whole recipe hinges on holding the eggs below the point where they scramble.
- The hinge: never let it boilEgg yolks set from about 160F and curdle around 180-185F. Cook over low heat or a bain-marie, stirring constantly, and pull it off at 175F, when it coats a spoon and leaves a clear trail through the film. If it does break, an immediate blitz with a stick blender will often bring it back.
- "Strain the liquid for half an hour"The line appears garbled; the sense must be steeping: take the pan off the heat, let the milk and cream infuse with the bay and lemon rind for half an hour, then strain out the flavourings before reheating with the sugar.
- Imperial pintsA British pint is 20 fl oz, so this is 2 1/2 US cups each of milk and cream — 5 cups of liquid in all, a large quantity. Halving the recipe is sensible for a modern household.
- "A well-lined saucepan"Victorian copper pans were tinned inside, and acidic mixtures attacked bare copper. A heavy-bottomed stainless or enamelled pan does the same job; avoid thin aluminium, which scorches milk.
- Lemon rindPare it in wide strips with a peeler, taking no white pith, which turns the custard bitter over a long infusion.
- Sugar and eggsThree ounces is about 85 g, a scant 7 tablespoons — restrained by modern standards. Beat the sugar into the yolks first rather than into the milk; it protects the yolks and dissolves more evenly.
- TemperingAdd the hot milk to the yolks in a thin stream while whisking, then return everything to the pan. Pouring cold yolks into hot milk, as written, works only if it is done very gradually.
- "A glass of brandy"Roughly 2 to 3 fl oz. The recipe has it stirred in after the custard is poured into the jug, i.e. off the heat, which also keeps the aroma from cooking away. Omit it and the custard is still complete.
- Yield and servingEnough for eight to ten small cups or handled custard glasses. Serve warm, or chill and use as a pouring sauce for fruit, tarts or steamed pudding; press cling film to the surface to stop a skin forming.
Boiled custard is the parent of a whole family of dishes — the base of ice cream, the sauce over pudding, the setting mixture in a trifle — and mastering it means learning to cook eggs without curdling them. The name is a survival rather than a description: "boiled" here distinguishes the stirred, pourable custard from a baked one, though the cook is told in the same breath that it must never actually boil. The bay leaf and lemon peel are older flavourings than vanilla, which is generally said to have reached English kitchens in quantity only in the nineteenth century and to have gradually displaced them; bay in sweet cream is still found in some traditional English recipes. The brandy and the delicate cups point to a genteel table, and the costing in shillings and pence — 2s. 4d. for a rich quart of custard, cream being the expense — was a standard feature of Cassell's, aimed at housekeepers budgeting a week's meals.