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Tve Wise
1 pint milk, 2 eggs, 2 tablespoons sugar, pinch of salt, vanilla. When cold, serve with whipped cream.
The page has come down to us stripped of its method — only the ingredients and the last line survive — but the proportions identify it clearly enough as a stirred (boiled) custard, the kind meant to be poured rather than sliced. What follows fills in what the original assumes its reader already knew.
- The hinge: heat gently, never boilEgg and milk custard thickens between about 170F and 180F and curdles a few degrees above that. Cook it in a double boiler or a heavy pan over low heat, stirring constantly, until it coats the back of a spoon, then take it off at once. A pan of cold water in the sink to set the pot in is worth having ready.
- It must be cooked, despite the wording"When cold" refers to the chilling that follows cooking, not to a cold-mixed dessert. Milk and eggs stirred together and merely chilled are unsafe and will not thicken. Bring the custard to at least 170F and hold it there briefly before cooling.
- What a pint means hereFive Roses was a Canadian book, so its pint is most likely the imperial one, 20 fl oz — a little under 2 1/2 US cups. Using 2 US cups gives a slightly richer, faster-setting custard, which is no loss.
- Two eggs is a pouring custardTwo eggs to a pint yields a thin sauce, right for spooning over stewed fruit, cake or a pudding. For a custard firm enough to eat with a spoon on its own, contemporary practice runs to four or five eggs, or two eggs plus two extra yolks, per pint.
- Sugar and flavouringTwo tablespoons per pint is restrained by modern taste; three to four is more usual now. Add the vanilla after the custard comes off the heat, since the aroma is volatile — a teaspoon of extract, or a split bean infused in the milk beforehand and then lifted out.
- StrainingPour the finished custard through a fine sieve into a cold bowl. This catches the inevitable threads of set white and is the difference between a smooth sauce and a grainy one.
- YieldAbout 2 1/2 cups of sauce, enough to serve four to six alongside fruit or cake, or two as a dessert in cups with the whipped cream on top.
- Skin and storageCover the surface directly with plastic or buttered paper while it cools if you dislike the skin. Keep it refrigerated and use within two days; a custard this lightly bound will thin slightly on standing and can be stirred smooth again.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company of Montreal, whose Five Roses flour was among the best-known brands in Canada in the early twentieth century; the book was assembled largely from recipes sent in by Canadian housewives who used the flour, and it circulated in hundreds of thousands of copies as a promotional item rather than a bookseller's title. That origin explains the telegraphic style of a page like this one: contributors wrote for other experienced cooks, and a stirred custard was so thoroughly standard equipment that listing the ingredients and the serving suggestion was felt to be enough. The corrupted heading " "Tve Wise" " is an artifact of scanning rather than anything the compilers wrote. Custard of this type, milk thickened with whole egg over gentle heat, served the same purpose in a 1910s Canadian kitchen that a jug of pouring cream or a packet of instant pudding would later fill: a cheap, quickly made sauce that turned plain stewed fruit or a slice of yesterday's cake into a dessert.