Home › Pudding Sauces › Eclair Custard
Eclair Custard
1 ounce sugar 1½ gills milk ½ ounce ground almonds 2 eggs (yolks) ½ ounce corn flour Grated lemon rind Mix the corn flour with a half gill cold water to a smooth paste. Boil remainder of milk and add to mixture. Returning to saucepan, stir till it becomes thick, then add almonds and lemon rind. Use cold.
A thin pastry cream meant to be poured cold over puddings rather than piped into éclairs. The printed method omits the sugar and yolks entirely, so read the ingredient list as the real instruction set.
- The missing stepWhisk the sugar into the yolks, then temper the hot thickened cornflour mixture into them off the heat and return the pan to low heat for a minute or two. The starch gives some protection, but keep the heat gentle and stir constantly; overheated yolks will still catch and taste of scrambled egg.
- GillsA Canadian imperial gill is 5 fl oz, so 1½ gills of milk is about 7½ fl oz — call it a scant cup. The half gill of cold water for slaking is about 5 tablespoons.
- Ounces are weightsThe dry ingredients are given by weight, not volume: 1 oz sugar is roughly 2 tablespoons, ½ oz cornflour roughly 2 tablespoons, ½ oz ground almonds roughly 2 tablespoons.
- Corn flourBritish and Canadian usage of the period; this is cornstarch, not the maize flour sold under that name in the United States today.
- SlakingThe cold-water paste must be completely smooth before the hot milk goes in, and the milk should be added in a thin stream while stirring. Lumps at this stage never disperse later.
- Lemon rindGrate only the coloured zest; the white pith turns the sauce bitter. Adding it after the custard comes off the heat keeps the oils fresh rather than cooked out.
- CoolingLay plastic wrap directly on the surface as it cools, or the skin that forms will have to be strained out. It thickens noticeably as it chills, so keep it slightly looser than you want it.
- YieldAbout a cup, depending on whether the half gill of water is read as additional to the 1½ gills or part of it; the recipe's 'remainder of milk' leaves this ambiguous. Enough sauce for a small pudding.
"Éclair custard" is a household name for what a pastry kitchen would call crème pâtissière: milk thickened with starch and egg yolk, the standard filling for éclairs and cream buns. The direction to "use cold" would suit a pudding sauce as much as a filling, and the borrowed name may have lent a plain cornflour sauce a little confectioner's glamour. Almond and citrus were long-established flavourings for boiled custards and may stand in for vanilla here, though the book does not say so. The Five Roses book was published by a flour milling company and offered to purchasers of its flour; small quantities are given by weight, as for a cook working from a kitchen scale rather than a set of cups.