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Snow Custard
Take a pint of milk, a pint of cream, a quarter of a pound of white sugar, and a stick of cinnamon, and set them on the fire; when the preparation begins to boil, pour in the yolks of ten eggs which have been beaten up in a few spoonfuls of cold milk; keep it well stirred all the time till it begins again to boil; then take out the cinnamon, and stir in the whites, which must also have been beaten up; turn it quickly all the time, that it may not run over; when it has assumed a thickish appearance, put it into a dish garnished with ratafia cakes and pastry alternately.
A stirred custard of the old school — very rich, cooked on direct heat, and finished by folding beaten whites into the hot base so it sets to a soft, foamy spoonable cream rather than a baked custard.
- The hinge: never actually boil itThe instruction to cook "till it begins again to boil" is best read as the point at which the custard thickens, at around 180F. Ten yolks in four to five cups of dairy will scramble if the pan reaches a true rolling boil, so pull it the moment it coats the back of a spoon.
- PintsCassell's is a British book, so a pint is 20 fl oz, not 16. A pint each of milk and cream is about 5 cups of dairy in all; using US pints gives 4 cups and a slightly firmer, richer result.
- Quarter pound of sugarFour ounces, or roughly half a cup of granulated. "White sugar" in this period simply distinguishes refined loaf sugar from unrefined brown — ordinary caster or granulated is the equivalent.
- Tempering the yolksBeating the yolks with a few spoonfuls of cold milk, as directed, loosens them and helps guard against curdling. As a modern precaution you can also add a ladle or two of the hot dairy to the loosened yolks first, then return everything to the pan off the heat before setting it back on a low flame.
- The whitesBeat them until frothy rather than very stiff. Stirred into the hot custard they cook through and give the "snow" of the title; whites beaten to a firm meringue are more likely to stay in lumps than to disperse into the cream.
- Ratafia cakesSmall, hard almond macaroons, sold in Britain as ratafia biscuits and closely related to Italian amaretti. Amaretti or crisp almond macaroons are a good stand-in; the "pastry" alongside is presumably small baked shapes for contrast, though the recipe does not say what kind.
- CinnamonA whole stick infused in the hot dairy, then removed. Ground cinnamon is not a substitute here — it will cloud the custard and leave grit.
- Yield and servingEnough for eight to ten as a dessert. Serve it in the dish it is turned into; it is best eaten soon after making, as a foamed custard of this kind tends to weep on standing. The recipe itself gives no direction about serving it hot or cold.
Snow custards belong to the long English family of soft, spooned creams — trifles, syllabubs, whipt creams — where the interest lies in aeration rather than in setting firm. Here the froth comes not from whipping cold cream but from folding beaten egg whites into a hot custard; French kitchens combined whites and custard differently in oeufs a la neige, eggs in snow, where the whites are poached separately and floated on the custard. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery was compiled for households with a cook and a coal range, and prints many such custards, the stirred custard being treated as a foundational skill: master the yolk-and-milk emulsion and much of the sweet course follows from it. Ratafia biscuits were a common garnish for creamy dishes of the period, and their name is generally traced to ratafia, the almond- or fruit-stone-flavoured cordial that gave the biscuits their bitter-almond note.