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Dutch Cream
Separate the whites from the yolks of three eggs, beat up the latter, and pour them gradually into a pint of new milk. Set the milk in an enamelled saucepan, and add to it a pint of cream, five ounces of loaf sugar, and one-eighth of an ounce of vanilla cut small. Stir the mixture over a slow fire for about ten minutes, and when thick enough, pour it through a coarse strainer. It must not boil. Sufficient for one quart or more. Probable cost, 2s, 4d.
This is a stirred egg custard — closer to a pouring sauce or the base of an ice than to a set cream. The whole thing hangs on heat control.
- It must not boilAt a simmer the yolk proteins curdle and the custard breaks into grains and whey. Keep the pan on low heat and stop at 175–180F, when the mixture coats the back of a spoon and a drawn finger leaves a clear track. Ten minutes is a reasonable estimate but the thermometer is the real guide.
- New milkMeans fresh whole milk, straight from the dairy and not skimmed or soured. Whole milk is the equivalent; with a pint of cream alongside it, the finished custard is very rich.
- Loaf sugarRefined sugar sold in cones and broken or crushed for use. Five ounces of ordinary granulated sugar — a little under three-quarters of a cup — is the same thing.
- Vanilla, cut smallAn eighth of an ounce is about 3.5 grams, which is roughly one vanilla pod, chopped fine so its flavour infuses during the gentle cooking. If using extract instead, a teaspoon or so stirred in off the heat is a rough equivalent, since heat drives off the aroma.
- Enamelled saucepanSpecified because bare copper and iron discolour egg and milk mixtures and give a metallic taste. Any non-reactive heavy pan does the job; a double boiler is more forgiving still.
- Pints and yieldThese are imperial pints of 20 fl oz, so a pint of milk plus a pint of cream is about 2.5 US cups each, and the two together make an imperial quart, which is what "sufficient for one quart or more" records. As a pouring sauce that quantity would stretch to six or eight helpings.
- Straining and coolingThe coarse strainer catches the chopped vanilla and any threads of set egg. Strain immediately into a cold bowl so residual pan heat does not carry the custard past the point of no return, then chill; it thickens further as it cools.
- The leftover whitesThe recipe uses only yolks. Three whites keep several days covered in the refrigerator and are the natural start of a meringue or a macaroon.
- Probable costTwo shillings and fourpence was a real sum in the later nineteenth century, and cream was the expensive part. The figure is a period price list, not anything you can convert usefully today.
The name "Dutch cream" turns up in nineteenth-century English cookery books for rich milk-and-egg preparations, and the connection to the Netherlands looks conventional rather than documented — Dutch dairying had a long-standing reputation in Britain, and the label may have signalled richness more than origin. What the recipe itself gives is the plain egg-and-cream custard that underlies dozens of later dishes, from pouring sauce to frozen creams. The warning that it must not boil mattered on a coal range with no thermometer, where the difference between a smooth cream and scrambled milk was a minute's inattention.