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Spinach Cream
Break the yolks of four eggs in a bowl, and free them from specks. Beat them well, and stir into them the third of a pint of hot milk and half a pint of thick cream. Sweeten the mixture, and put it into a saucepan with half a stick of cinnamon. Stir it over a gentle fire till it begins to thicken; add one-eighth of a pint of spinach juice, and stir it again till it is equally coloured. Slice some sponge biscuits, put them into a glass dish, pour the cream upon them, and lay thin strips of candied fruit on the surface. Serve cold. If preferred, macaroons or preserved oranges may be substituted for the sponge biscuits, or the cream may be served in custard glasses. To prepare the spinach juice, see SPINACH, GREEN, FOR COLOURING. Time, a few minutes to simmer the custard. Probable cost, about 3s. Sufficient for a moderate-sized supper-dish.
A stirred custard coloured green with spinach juice, poured over sponge biscuits and served cold. The measurements are imperial and the sweetening is left entirely to the cook.
- The hinge: gentle heatThis is an egg-yolk custard with no starch, so it curdles if it boils. Cook it to about 175-180F, stirring constantly, until it coats the back of a spoon, and pull it off the heat the moment it thickens.
- Imperial measuresA pint here is 20 fl oz. A third of a pint is about 6 3/4 fl oz (a generous 3/4 cup), half a pint is 10 fl oz (1 1/4 cups), and one-eighth of a pint is 2 1/2 fl oz (5 tablespoons).
- Thick creamThis means British double cream, around 48% fat. Heavy or whipping cream is the closest substitute; single cream or half-and-half will give a thinner set.
- Sweeten the mixtureNo quantity is given. For this volume of dairy and four yolks, 2 to 3 tablespoons of caster sugar is in the right range; whisk it into the yolks before adding the hot milk.
- Spinach juiceThe cross-referenced preparation is the usual Victorian spinach colouring: leaves pounded raw and the juice strained out, gently heated so the green matter separates, and used as a dye. It contributes almost no flavour at this quantity. The recipe has it stirred in over the fire until the colour is even; keep the heat low and the time short, as prolonged heating dulls the green.
- CinnamonHalf a stick is roughly a 1 1/2 to 2 inch piece. It infuses as the custard cooks; the recipe does not say so, but lift it out before the cream is poured.
- Sponge biscuitsThese are savoiardi or ladyfingers, dry and crisp rather than soft. They soak up the custard as it cools; the recipe says only to serve cold.
- Candied fruitCandied citron, angelica and orange peel were among the candied fruits commonly to hand, cut into thin strips. Any candied peel works; cut it fine so it does not dominate.
- Yield and cost"A moderate-sized supper-dish" is perhaps 6 servings, or 6 to 8 custard glasses. The 3s. is Victorian money and reflects chiefly the cream and eggs.
Coloured creams were a staple of the Victorian supper table, where a course of sweets was judged partly on the look of the assembled dishes: a white blancmange, a pink cream tinted with cochineal, a yellow one from saffron or egg, and a green one from spinach. The spinach was valued here for colour rather than flavour. The method was to pound the raw leaves, strain the juice and heat it gently until the green matter coagulated into a paste that could be worked into creams, ices and icings without the vegetable taste following it in — a preparation long established in English and French cookery books, and one Cassell's keeps as a standing cross-reference under Spinach. That reference structure is characteristic of the New Dictionary of Cookery, an alphabetical reference rather than a book to read through. The dish itself is a plain boiled custard over sponge, close kin to trifle without the wine, and the interest lies almost entirely in the colour.