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Filling (Dessertspoon cornstarch Boil)
1 cup milk ½ cup sugar 1 egg. ½ dessertspoon cornstarch Boil milk, add sugar and cornstarch, lastly the well-beaten egg. When cool, flavor to taste.
If liked, one may brush the tops with a little beaten egg and milk before putting in oven. When cold, open and fill with whipped cream or custard filling, and dust tops with fine sugar.
This is a page fragment rather than a complete recipe: the ingredient list has been broken up and scattered through the method, and the milk and egg quantities never appear at all. What survives is a standard boiled cornstarch custard for filling cream puffs or tart shells, and it can be reconstructed with care.
- What is missingThe text gives no quantity of milk, and "the well-beaten egg" points back to an ingredient list that has not survived; the sugar and cornstarch have been separated from the rest of that list. Treat the printed amounts as partial and work from a known custard ratio rather than assuming the page is complete.
- A dessertspoonTwo teaspoons, midway between a teaspoon and a tablespoon. Half a dessertspoon is therefore about one teaspoon of cornstarch, which will only thicken about a cup of milk to a light pouring custard, not a pastry-cream consistency.
- The cup of sugarOne cup is far too much for a single cup of milk and would give a syrup rather than a custard. It almost certainly belongs to a neighbouring recipe on the same page; two to four tablespoons is the working amount for a filling of this size.
- The hinge: temper the eggBeaten egg dropped straight into boiling milk scrambles. Whisk a ladle of the hot thickened milk into the egg first, return the mixture to the pan, and cook over low heat, stirring, until it coats a spoon at around 170-175F. Do not let it return to a full boil once the egg is in.
- Slake the cornstarchMix the cornstarch with a spoonful of cold milk before it goes into the hot pan, or it will lump. The starch needs to reach a simmer briefly to lose its raw taste and reach full thickening power.
- Flavouring when coolThe recipe says only "flavor to taste"; vanilla, lemon rind or nutmeg were common choices for a filling of this kind. Add vanilla off the heat, as the aroma cooks away; grated rind can go in with the milk and be strained out.
- The egg wash and ovenThe line about brushing the tops with beaten egg and milk belongs to the pastry shells, not the filling. The recipe gives no oven temperature; puff and choux cases are generally started in a hot oven and then dried out at a lower heat before being split and filled.
- Fill cold, serve soonBoth shell and custard must be completely cold before assembly or the pastry goes soft. Filled puffs hold an hour or two at most; the custard itself keeps two days covered in the refrigerator with a film pressed on the surface to stop a skin forming.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company to promote its flour, and much of its contents came from recipes sent in by Canadian housewives. A boiled cornstarch custard of this kind was the standard household filling for cream puffs and patty shells before commercial pastry cream or packaged pudding mixes existed: cornstarch stretched a small number of eggs into a filling stiff enough to hold its shape, which mattered in a period when eggs were seasonal and expensive. The direction to "open and fill with whipped cream or custard filling" reflects the way such a page worked in practice — one shell recipe, several fillings, cooks expected to mix and match without being told twice.