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Meopham Cream
Put a quarter of a pound of sifted sugar into a saucepan with a table-spoonful of water, stir with a wooden spoon over the fire until it is a clear syrup thick enough to coat a mould, then pour it in and turn slowly round and round until the mould is coated all over. Break three eggs into a basin, beat well, add a pint and a half of boiling milk gradually with four ounces of castor sugar. Put this into the mould, together with two and a half ounces of sweet almonds, blanched and chopped. Cover the top with buttered paper, stand the mould in a tin of boiling water which reaches nearly to the top, and cook in a sharp oven for twenty-five minutes. A table-spoonful of chartreuse added to the custard is a great improvement. Probable cost, 1s. 3d.
A caramel-lined baked custard in the crème caramel family, with chopped almonds through it. Two things in the original need attention before you start: the oven heat and the egg-to-milk ratio.
- The oven is wrong for a custardA "sharp" oven means a hot one, generally taken as somewhere above 400F, though the book gives no figures. A baked custard set that high will curdle and weep even in a water bath. Bake at 300-325F and judge by set, not by clock — expect 45-60 minutes for this quantity, until the centre wobbles as a single mass.
- Check the egg ratioThree eggs to a pint and a half of milk (an imperial pint is 20 fl oz, so 30 fl oz in all) is far too thin to unmould. A custard that stands up wants about 4 whole eggs plus 2 yolks per pint of milk. Either scale the eggs up or accept it as a spoon custard served in the dish.
- Caramel first, and work fastQuarter pound of sifted sugar with a tablespoon of water thickens to a syrup that begins to colour around 340-350F. Pour it into a warm, dry mould and tilt immediately — it sets hard within seconds, and a cold mould makes it seize before it has coated the sides.
- Castor sugarSuperfine sugar. Ordinary granulated dissolves fine in hot milk here; the fineness matters more in uncooked mixtures.
- Temper the milk"Add a pint and a half of boiling milk gradually" is the whole safeguard against scrambled eggs. Pour in a thin stream while whisking, then strain the mixture before it goes into the mould to catch any threads of set white.
- Sweet almondsSimply ordinary almonds, as distinct from the bitter almonds Victorian cooks also bought. Blanch by pouring boiling water over them, slipping the skins, then chop; 2½ oz is a generous half cup.
- ChartreuseStill made, still expensive. A tablespoon of the green is assertive; the yellow is gentler and sweeter. Any almond or orange liqueur substitutes without disgrace.
- Buttered paper and the bain-marieFoil or parchment does the same job — it stops a skin forming and keeps splashing water out. Use hot, not boiling, water in the tin at the lower oven temperature, coming two-thirds up the mould.
- Yield and turning outServes six to eight. Chill several hours, then run a thin knife round the edge and invert onto a lipped dish — the dissolved caramel comes out as a sauce and will run.
Meopham is a village in Kent, pronounced "Meppam", and the name follows a habit that runs all through Cassell's: dishes christened after places, country houses and hostesses, whether or not the connection was ever documented. The dish itself is a caramel-lined baked custard, the same construction as the French crème renversée au caramel that had become a fixture of English dinner tables by the late nineteenth century, distinguished here only by chopped almonds and an optional spoonful of Chartreuse — the Carthusian liqueur then fashionable enough in Britain to turn up as a flavouring in puddings and ices. The "probable cost, 1s. 3d." belongs to Cassell's standard apparatus of costings for mistresses budgeting a household.