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Wine Custard
Rub off the zest of a lemon on six ounces of sugar; beat eighteen eggs to froth with half a table-spoonful of flour--potato flour, if it is at hand--a quart of wine, and a cupful of orange-flower water. Set the mixture on the fire, and keep stirring it till it froths. Pour the custard into cups or bowls, and serve with macaroons.
This is a sabayon in all but name: a wine-and-egg foam cooked over heat and served warm in cups. The whole thing lives or dies on how you apply the heat.
- Gentle heat, not "on the fire"Set the bowl over a pan of barely simmering water rather than on direct heat, and whisk constantly. The mixture thickens and foams at about 165-175F; past roughly 180F the egg protein sets in curds and cannot be recovered.
- Eighteen eggs is ambiguousPeriod wine custards were made with whole eggs, with yolks alone, or with a mixture. Whole eggs give a lighter foam; all yolks give a richer, spoonable custard. The original does not say.
- Scale it downEighteen eggs, six ounces of sugar and a quart of wine will fill a dozen or more cups. A third of the quantity - six eggs, 2 oz sugar, about 1 1/3 cups wine - is a manageable batch for a home whisk arm.
- The wineA sweet or off-dry wine is probably what is meant: Marsala, Madeira, sherry or a sweet Sauternes-style wine. A dry modern white may read thin and acidic against only six ounces of sugar for the whole batch.
- Potato flourThis is potato starch, not potato flour in the modern sense. It is there as insurance against curdling; cornstarch works the same way. Slake it in a little of the wine before adding so it does not lump.
- Rubbing the zest on sugarRub a whole lemon against the sugar lumps or granules until the sugar is yellow and fragrant. This draws out the peel oils without adding bitter pith or wet zest, and it is worth doing properly - it is the only aromatic besides the flower water.
- Orange-flower waterA cupful of modern orange-flower water would likely be overwhelming; commercial distillates vary widely in strength and many are far more concentrated than the recipe seems to assume. Start with a teaspoon or two and taste.
- ServingServe warm, in small cups, within minutes of making - the foam collapses as it cools. The macaroons meant are crisp almond macaroons, not soft coconut ones.
Wine custards of this kind sit between the English possets and syllabubs and the Italian zabaglione, all built on the same idea: egg and sweet wine whisked over gentle heat will thicken into a foam without any cream at all. Distilled floral waters such as orange-flower water were a common sweet flavouring in British kitchens from the seventeenth century onward, and became less usual as vanilla extract grew cheaper and more reliable over the nineteenth century. The suggestion of potato flour reflects the ready availability of manufactured starches by the period.