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EGGS (a la Creme)
To five or six eggs that have been well whipped to a froth add gradually half a pint of cream, and, while mixing, flavour with a tea-spoonful of salt. Butter a mould and pour in the mixture. It may be baked gently in the oven till set, or placed over a pan of boiling water. When turned out of the mould, a rich brown gravy should be poured round it. Probable cost, 2s.
This is a savoury baked custard, unmoulded and served with gravy — closer to a French oeufs moulés than to anything sweet. The whole thing hinges on gentle heat.
- Half a pint of creamAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, so about 1¼ US cups. With five or six eggs that gives a firm custard that will stand when turned out; single (light) cream or half-and-half is the right richness, not double cream.
- "Baked gently"The recipe gives no temperature; a moderate oven of roughly 300–325F suits a custard. Much above that the proteins tighten and the custard can weep and turn granular instead of slicing clean.
- Set the mould in waterThe second method — over a pan of boiling water — amounts to steaming or a double boiler; either way the point is indirect, capped heat. In the oven the same effect comes from standing the buttered mould in a roasting tin of hot water reaching halfway up.
- Judging donenessPull it when the centre still trembles slightly and an inserted knife comes out clean, somewhere around 170–180F internally. Carryover heat finishes it.
- Don't whip to a real frothThe direction to whip the eggs to a froth is best read loosely. Beat them until uniform, then stir the cream in without incorporating air; trapped bubbles set into a spongy, pitted texture. Straining the mixture before it goes into the mould gives the smoothest result.
- The saltA teaspoon across five or six eggs and 10 oz of cream lands at roughly one percent by weight, which is correct for a savoury custard. It will taste seasoned, not salty.
- The brown gravyNo recipe is given for it. A well-reduced beef or veal jus, or a small quantity of good pan gravy, poured around rather than over the moulded custard is the intended effect; the book assumes gravy is already to hand.
- Yield and costThe quantities would stretch to perhaps four to six as a light or savoury course, though the recipe gives no yield of its own. "Probable cost, 2s." is two shillings, one of the standing cost notes Cassell's attached to its recipes.
The naming — à la crème — reflects how thoroughly late-Victorian British cookery borrowed French labels for its dining-room repertoire, though the savoury character of this dish comes from the salt and gravy rather than from any formal classification. Moulded egg custards, sweet and savoury alike, were common in that period's kitchens, turning a few eggs and some cream into something that could be presented whole on a dish. The recipe also assumes a household that keeps brown gravy on hand as a matter of course, an assumption that runs through the whole of nineteenth-century English cookery writing: stock and its reductions were treated as a standing resource, not an ingredient to be shopped for.