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Canary Cream
Put a pint of milk into a saucepan with a little sugar and the grated rind of half a lemon. When boiling, pour it upon the beaten yolks of 3 eggs. Return it to the stewpan, and stir it over a slow fire till the eggs thicken, and be very careful that it does not curdle. When cool, stir in a small glass of sherry or brandy to flavor it, and serve in custard glasses. Time, twenty minutes.
A stirred egg custard, not a baked one, despite the chapter it sits in. Everything depends on holding the heat low enough that the yolks thicken without setting into scrambled egg.
- The hinge: temperatureYolks thicken at about 160-175F and curdle above roughly 180F. Keep the pan on the lowest burner setting, stir constantly with a wooden spoon or spatula, and pull it off when the custard coats the back of the spoon and holds a clean line when you draw a finger through it. A double boiler removes most of the risk.
- TemperingPouring the hot milk onto the beaten yolks, rather than the reverse, is the whole safeguard here. Add it in a thin stream while whisking, then return the mixture to the pan.
- If it does curdleStrain it immediately into a cold bowl and whisk hard, or blitz briefly with a stick blender. A lightly broken custard can usually be brought back; one that has gone to visible curds cannot.
- "A little sugar"Unspecified in the original. For a pint of milk, 2 to 3 tablespoons gives a lightly sweet custard; the sherry adds a little more. Dissolve it in the milk as it heats.
- "A small glass" of sherryA wine glass of the period was small by modern standards, roughly 2 fluid ounces. Add it once the custard has cooled, as the original says, since alcohol stirred into hot custard can encourage separation.
- Lemon rindGrate only the yellow zest of half a lemon; the white pith turns the cream bitter. Steeping a pared strip in the milk and straining it out gives a cleaner flavour than grated rind left in.
- Straining and chillingPass the finished custard through a fine sieve to catch any threads of set egg, then chill. It will thicken further as it cools.
- Yield and timeA pint of milk with three yolks makes about four custard glasses. The stated twenty minutes covers the cooking only; allow an hour or more to cool and chill before serving.
The name may point to Canary sack, the sweet fortified wine shipped from the Canary Islands that was a fixture in English cellars from the sixteenth century onward, though the connection is not established by anything in the recipe itself. Canary wine had in any case been largely displaced in British and American households by Spanish sherry and by brandy, which are the two spirits the recipe offers. The dish belongs to the large family of boiled or stirred custards that filled Victorian dessert chapters: cheap, quick, and made almost entirely from what a household already had, with the wine doing the work of a flavouring extract.