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Custard Sauce for Sweet Puddings
Mix a pint of milk, sweetened and flavoured, with two eggs lightly beaten. Put this into a saucepan and stir it gently till it thickens, but it must not boil. Pour it in a tureen or a glass dish, and, just before serving, add a little sugar and a table-spoonful of brandy, and grate a little nutmeg over the top. This sauce is good with fruit tarts as well as sweet puddings. Time, about ten minutes to thicken. Sufficient for a moderate-sized pudding. Probable cost, 4d., exclusive of the brandy.
A thin pouring custard of the plainest kind: two eggs to a pint of milk, stirred over gentle heat. The whole thing turns on temperature control, since there is no starch here to protect against curdling.
- Never let it boilEgg proteins set from around 150F and the sauce thickens by about 175F; a boil scrambles it into grains. Use low heat or a bowl over simmering water, stir constantly with a wooden spoon, and pull it off the moment it coats the back of the spoon.
- The pint is imperialCassell's pint is 20 fl oz, about 2.4 US cups. Two eggs to that volume gives a distinctly thin sauce, closer to a pouring cream than to modern creme anglaise, which commonly uses four to six yolks per pint.
- Insurance against curdlingA teaspoon of cornflour whisked into the cold eggs stabilises the mix without dulling the flavour. Failing that, keep a cold bowl and a sieve to hand and strain the moment it thickens.
- "Sweetened and flavoured"The book leaves both to the cook and does not say how. The usual period method was to infuse the milk first with a strip of lemon peel or a split vanilla pod and then strain it out. Around 1.5 oz (3 tbsp) sugar per pint suits most puddings.
- The second sugaringThe recipe gives no reason for the extra sugar at the end. One possibility is that the sauce is served warm or cool rather than hot, and cold blunts sweetness. Taste before you add it rather than following the instruction blind.
- Brandy at the endIt goes in off the heat so the alcohol is not driven off. A tablespoon in a pint is a light touch; rum or sherry works the same way.
- Skin and storagePress a disc of greaseproof paper or cling film onto the surface if it is to stand. It keeps three days refrigerated and does not freeze well.
- YieldA pint serves six to eight as a pouring sauce.
The stirred egg custard is the parent of ice cream bases, trifle sauce and half the Victorian pudding repertoire. The two-egg proportion here is frankly economical: richer households are often said to have used yolks alone and more of them, but a pint of milk and two eggs at fourpence made a sauce that could be poured over anything from a boiled roly-poly to a plate of stewed plums. Nutmeg grated over the top is traditionally associated with English milk puddings and custards, a habit generally traced to the era when the spice was costly enough to be a visible mark of hospitality; the brandy, excluded from the costing, was plainly an optional flourish for the household that had a bottle open.