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Custard Pudding, Baked
Take as many eggs as will when level cover the bottom of the dish in which you intend to bake the custard. Break each one into a separate cup before it is mixed with the rest, to ensure the quality of the eggs. Beat them a minute or two, but not too much, or the custard will be watery. Fill the dish with milk, sweeten liberally, and add a pinch of salt. Flavour with brandy, lemon, almond, vanilla, rose-water, orange-water, or any other flavouring. Stir all together. Grate a little nutmeg on the top, and bake in a moderate oven. As soon as the custard is set it is done enough. Time to bake about half an hour. Probable cost, 9d., for a moderate-sized dish. Sufficient for four or five persons.
The method is sound but the measurements are given by eye, in the manner of a cook who has made custard a thousand times. Two things need translating: the egg-to-milk ratio, and the oven.
- The egg count, translatedEggs laid flat in a single layer on the bottom of the dish works out at roughly 3 to 4 eggs per pint (2 cups) of milk. Anything in the range of 3 to 5 eggs per pint will set; fewer gives a loose, spoonable custard, more gives a firm, sliceable one.
- "Moderate oven"Usually reckoned at around 350F, though custard is better at 300-325F. Much above 350F the egg proteins tighten faster than the milk can heat through, and the custard is apt to curdle and weep at the edges while the centre is still liquid.
- Use a water bathCassell's omits it here. Standing the dish in a roasting tin of hot water reaching halfway up the sides buffers the outside against the oven's heat and much improves the result.
- Do not overbeatThe instruction to beat "a minute or two, but not too much" is exactly right, and the stated reason is real. Air whipped into the eggs expands in the oven, then collapses, leaving a foamy layer above a thin, watery one. Beat only until the yolks and whites are uniform.
- Judging when it is set"As soon as the custard is set" means set at the rim with a circle in the centre, about the size of a coin, that still wobbles as a mass rather than ripples as a liquid. It finishes in the residual heat. A knife inserted an inch from the edge should come out clean. Expect 30 to 45 minutes at 325F depending on the depth of the dish.
- Sweeten liberallyRead that as 2 to 3 tablespoons of sugar per pint of milk. Sugar also raises the temperature at which egg sets, so a well-sweetened custard is slightly more forgiving in the oven.
- The flavouringsRose-water and orange-flower water were staples of the Victorian store cupboard and are still sold in Middle Eastern groceries; strengths vary a good deal between brands, so start with half a teaspoon per pint and taste. "Almond" here most likely means almond essence or a few drops of ratafia rather than the bitter almonds themselves. Use modern almond extract.
- YieldAs stated, four to five; the recipe gives no milk quantity, only a "moderate-sized dish". Serve barely warm or cold; hot baked custard tastes flat and eggy.
Baked custard sits at the foundation of English sweet cookery. The word itself is generally traced to crustade, a medieval pastry case filled with a sweetened egg-and-milk mixture, the filling eventually outliving the crust and taking its name. The instruction to break each egg into a separate cup belongs to a period before reliable refrigeration or date-stamping, when a single bad egg could waste a bowl of ingredients and a cook was judged on not wasting them. So does the costing: ninepence for a dish serving five was the kind of figure a Victorian housekeeper checked her accounts against, and Cassell's gives such a price for nearly every recipe in the book.