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Custard, Excellent
Put a pint of new milk, and half a pint of good cream into a saucepan, with a bay-leaf, the thin rind of a lemon, and two table-spoonfuls of sifted sugar. Simmer the liquid gently for twenty minutes. Then strain it, and add to it gradually the well-beaten yolks of five eggs. Pour the mixture from one jug to another for a minute or two. Then place it in one of the jugs in a saucepan of warm water. Put this on the fire, and stir the custard until it thickens. Pour it out; add a wine-glassful of brandy, and continue stirring until the custard is cold. Serve in glasses, and put a ratafia on the top of each custard. Time, altogether, three-quarters of an hour. Probable cost, 1s. 6d. Sufficient for nearly a quart of custard.
A classic stirred custard, thickened over water rather than direct heat. The only real risk is scrambling it, and the recipe's odd-looking jug-pouring step is there to help prevent exactly that.
- The hinge: keep it below a simmerEgg yolks set around 150-160F and curdle above about 180F. Stir constantly and pull the custard off the heat the moment it coats the back of a spoon; the water beneath should be steaming, never bubbling hard.
- Imperial measuresA British pint is 20 fl oz, so this is 2 1/2 cups milk and 1 1/4 cups cream. A wine-glassful is roughly 2 fl oz. Two tablespoons of sugar is modest by modern taste; up to four is reasonable.
- New milkSimply fresh whole milk, straight from the dairy and not skimmed. Whole milk is the equivalent; the added cream brings the mixture to roughly the richness of half-and-half plus a little extra fat.
- Sifted sugarNot modern confectioners' sugar, which contains starch. In Victorian usage this is refined white sugar broken from the loaf and passed through a sieve; it was finer than modern granulated, so caster sugar is the nearest match.
- The bay leafNot a mistake. Bay was a standard English custard flavouring alongside the lemon peel, giving a faint almond-like note. Use one fresh or dried leaf and remove it at the straining stage as directed.
- Pouring from jug to jugThe recipe does not say why, but the effect is to mix and cool the custard slightly, distributing the yolks evenly rather than letting them set in streaks. A whisk does the same work faster.
- Add the brandy off the heatAlcohol thins the set and can shock the eggs if added hot. Stirring until cold, as instructed, also stops a skin forming.
- RatafiasSmall crisp almond macaroons, sold in Britain as ratafia biscuits. Amaretti, broken to size, are the nearest supermarket substitute.
- YieldClose to a quart, which fills six to eight small glasses. It will keep two days covered in the refrigerator but does not freeze well.
Stirred egg custards of this kind are among the oldest sweet dishes in English cookery, descended from the medieval crustade — a pastry case with a set filling — from which the word custard itself comes. By the time Cassell's was compiled in the 1870s the pastry had long since dropped away and the custard was served alone, in glasses, as a light dessert or an accompaniment to fruit and trifles. The bay leaf and lemon rind belong to an older English flavouring tradition that predates the wide availability of vanilla pods, and the brandy suggests a company version rather than a nursery one. The costing in shillings and pence appears throughout the book, the quart of custard here reckoned at 1s. 6d.