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Milk Sauce or Cream Sauce
Take the yolks of two eggs, remove the specks, then beat them well and add a table-spoonful of powdered white sugar, and sufficient vanilla, ratafia, lemon-peel, or any other substance that may be preferred, to flavour the whole. Pour this into half a pint of cream or milk, set it over the fire, and make it very hot, without letting it boil, or the sauce will curdle. Sufficient for six or seven persons. Time to make, ten minutes. Probable cost, with cream, 1s. 4d.
A stirred custard sauce in its plainest form: yolks, sugar, flavouring and dairy, taken hot but never to a boil. The whole dish hinges on that last point.
- Heat is the whole recipeEgg yolks in milk thicken from about 160F and scramble by 185F. Hold the pan just below a simmer, stir constantly, and pull it off when it coats the back of a spoon — roughly 175-180F on a thermometer.
- Half a pintCassell's is British, so a pint is 20 fluid ounces and half a pint is 10 — about 1¼ US cups. Two yolks to that quantity gives a pouring sauce, not a set custard.
- "Remove the specks"Usually taken to mean picking out the chalazae, the white cords anchoring the yolk, along with any stray fleck of shell or blood. They do not dissolve and leave stringy bits in a strained-looking sauce. Passing the finished sauce through a sieve does the same job.
- RatafiaIn this period ratafia means an almond flavouring, associated with the small bitter-almond biscuits sold under the same name. Modern almond extract is the direct substitute; use it sparingly, a few drops to this quantity.
- Lemon-peelThe recipe does not say how; in practice peel is infused rather than added raw. Warm the milk with a pared strip of zest (no white pith), let it stand off the heat, then strain before combining with the yolks.
- A tablespoon of sugarAbout 12-15 g, which is restrained by modern dessert standards. The sauce is meant to accompany a sweet pudding rather than stand alone; taste and adjust if it is going over something plain.
- If it does curdleTip it immediately into a cold bowl and whisk hard, or blitz briefly with a stick blender. A lightly broken custard usually comes back; a badly scrambled one does not.
- Yield and keepingSix or seven servings means a couple of spoonfuls each over pudding. Serve warm, or cover the surface directly with film to stop a skin forming and refrigerate for up to two days.
This is essentially what most kitchens now call crème anglaise, with the flavouring left entirely to the cook. The alternative title, "Milk Sauce or Cream Sauce," reflects the choice the recipe itself offers: the costing of 1s. 4d. is given for the cream version, and the text allows that milk will do. Ratafia, offered here as casually as vanilla, was a familiar flavouring of the period, associated with the small almond macaroons sold under that name. The insistence on not boiling is the point the recipe is most emphatic about, and it is the same warning custard recipes have carried before and since.