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Puffed Eggs
Beat four eggs lightly, and mix with them about a pint of cream or of milk. Season with salt and pepper. Butter a mould, and pour in the mixture; cover it, and set it on a plate turned upside down in a saucepan, with boiling water two inches deep. Let the mixture steam until it is set. Turn it upon a hot dish, and pour round it a little good brown gravy. Time to steam, twenty minutes or more. Probable cost, 10d., if made with milk. Sufficient for two or three persons.
A savoury steamed custard, cooked in a water bath improvised from a saucepan and an upturned plate. It stands or falls on gentle heat.
- The hinge: keep the water below a rolling boilOnce the custard itself climbs much above 180F it curdles and weeps, and no amount of gravy hides it. Bring the water to the boil, then drop it to a bare shiver for the whole cooking time, and keep the pan covered.
- The upturned plateThis is simply a trivet: it lifts the mould off the pan bottom so the direct heat of the burner does not hit it. A folded tea towel, a steamer basket or a canning ring does the same job.
- A pint is 20 fl ozCassell's is British, so the pint is imperial — 20 imperial fluid ounces, about 568 ml, or roughly 2.4 US cups. Four eggs to that much liquid is a very soft set; if you want a custard that will turn out of the mould cleanly, six eggs to the pint is a safer ratio, or steam it in individual ramekins and serve them in the dish.
- TimingTwenty minutes suits small moulds. A single pint-and-a-half mould will want 35 to 50 minutes. It is done when the centre wobbles as a single mass and a knife slipped in at the edge comes out clean.
- Cover the mould properly"Cover it" means keeping condensation off the surface, which otherwise pits and dilutes the top. Buttered parchment under foil, crimped down, works.
- Turning outLet it stand five minutes off the heat, run a thin knife round the edge, then invert. Steamed custards continue to firm as they cool slightly, and a custard turned out straight from the pan is the one that collapses.
- The brown gravyAssumed to be on hand in a Victorian kitchen. Any well-reduced meat stock thickened lightly with a brown roux does the job; a thin, glossy sauce is wanted, not a coating one.
- Cost and yieldTenpence in pre-decimal money, and the book's own estimate of two or three servings is fair — as a light supper dish or a first course rather than a main.
Savoury egg custards of this kind sit between two older traditions: the medieval and early-modern English "custarde", which was as often meat-based as sweet, and the French oeufs moulés familiar in nineteenth-century English cookery. The technique is the one behind baked custard, quenelle mixtures and royale garnishes for clear soup — coagulating egg protein gently. The "puffed" of the title is optimistic: with no beaten whites and no flour, what actually happens is a slight rise from steam trapped in the set custard, which subsides as it cools. The upturned plate in a saucepan suggests a cook improvising a bain-marie with what was on the dresser.