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Lemon Custard
Put the thin rind of two lemons into a pint of cream, and soak until the flavour is extracted. Boil the cream, and pour it gradually over the well-whisked yolks of eight eggs. Remove the lemon-rind, add a table-spoonful of brandy, and two table-spoonfuls of Madeira. Pour the mixture into a jug, place it in a pan of boiling water, and stir one way until the contents thicken. Serve either in cups or on a dish. Time, half an hour to prepare. Probable cost, exclusive of the brandy and wine, 2s. 4d. Sufficient for a pint and a half of custard.
A rich stirred custard in the old style: no sugar, no starch, and eight yolks to the pint, thickened over water rather than direct heat. The whole thing hinges on temperature control.
- Heat is the hingeYolks set between about 160F and 180F and scramble not far above that. Keep the water in the outer pan at a bare simmer, never a rolling boil, and pull the custard the moment it coats the back of a spoon. "Stir one way" is period superstition, but the constant stirring it enforces is exactly right.
- The missing sugarAs printed there is none, which reads oddly to a modern palate. An unsweetened custard of this kind would suit being served with something sweet alongside -- fruit, preserves or a sweet wine jelly. If you want it as a dessert in its own right, 2 to 3 oz of caster sugar whisked into the yolks is in keeping.
- Pint and creamAn imperial pint is 20 fl oz, or about 2 1/2 US cups. The recipe specifies only 'cream'; something in the range of modern single or light cream is the safer reading, as double or heavy cream will give a very heavy result with this many yolks.
- The rindPare it with a vegetable peeler so no white pith comes away, or the custard turns bitter. Twenty to thirty minutes off the heat in warm cream draws the oils out; the recipe's half-hour total time is optimistic if you want real lemon flavour.
- TemperingPouring boiled cream over the yolks "gradually" is the safeguard against scrambling. Add a ladleful first, whisking hard, then the rest in a steady stream.
- Brandy and MadeiraAlcohol and acid both encourage curdling. Stirring them in at the end, after the custard has thickened and come off the heat, is safer than adding them before, as the original directs.
- The jug in a panAn improvised bain-marie. A heatproof bowl over, not in, simmering water does the same job with less risk of the vessel tipping; a heavy saucepan over low heat works too if you never stop stirring.
- YieldA pint and a half, which fills six to eight small custard cups. Cover the surface with cling film if chilling, or a skin forms.
The eight-yolk ratio marks it as a rich table custard rather than a nursery one. The word custard is generally traced to the medieval crustade, a pastry case with a set egg filling, the name outliving the crust by several centuries. Brandy and Madeira in a dessert custard were unremarkable in a well-provisioned Victorian household, and the recipe notes that the costing excludes them. The instruction to serve "either in cups or on a dish" points to its two uses: poured into small handled custard cups, or used as a pouring sauce over fruit, sponge or a trifle.