Home › Introductory Recipes › Plain Boiled Custard and Float
Plain Boiled Custard and Float
To each quart of milk allow four or five eggs and three tablespoons of sugar, beating the sugar with the yolks of the eggs before adding the milk. The whites may be whipped separately with a tablespoon of sugar and used as a meringue or whipped lightly into the body of the custard as preferred. The custard may have added to it a teaspoon or more of dissolved cornstarch. This may also be baked, placing the custard in cups or one dish, baking carefully in moderate oven in an outer vessel of water. Float is a thinner form of custard and for this three or four eggs may be used with a little cornstarch. Neither the thicker, "boiled" custard or float should be allowed to boil but (in a double boiler) cooked just under boiling point and watched carefully while it thickens.
A skeleton recipe rather than a formula: the author gives ratios and trusts the cook to watch the pot. A few numbers fill in what is left unsaid.
- The hinge: temperature, not timeStirred custard sets between about 170 and 180F. Above that the egg protein tightens and squeezes out the liquid, which is the curdled, grainy result the instruction "should not be allowed to boil" is guarding against. An instant-read thermometer does what the period cook did by eye, when the custard coats a spoon and holds a line drawn through it with a finger.
- QuantitiesA quart of milk is 4 cups; four or five eggs and 3 tablespoons sugar per quart gives a lightly sweet custard by modern taste. It should give roughly six modest servings, and the thinner float, made from the same quantity of milk, about the same volume.
- "Moderate oven"For the baked version, 325 to 350F. The outer vessel of water should come halfway up the cups and be hot when it goes in; pull the custards while the centers still wobble, as they firm as they cool.
- Cornstarch"Dissolved" means slaked in a few tablespoons of cold milk before it joins the pot, or it will lump. A teaspoon per quart is insurance against curdling rather than a thickener you will taste; do not omit the eggs on its account.
- The whitesWhipped whites folded into hot custard or heaped on cold custard stay essentially raw. If that is a concern, poach the meringue: drop spoonfuls into barely simmering milk for about a minute a side, lift them off, then use that milk to make the custard. Meringue on a baked custard cooks in the oven.
- Strain and stop the cookingPour the finished custard through a fine sieve into a cool bowl the moment it thickens. This catches any threads of set egg and drops the temperature below the curdling point, which a heavy pan left on the stove will not do on its own.
- Float versus boiled custardThe distinction is thickness only. Float is meant to be poured, thin enough for the meringue islands to sit on the surface; the thicker custard is eaten with a spoon or used as a sauce over fruit and cake.
- FlavoringThe recipe gives none. Vanilla, a strip of lemon peel, or nutmeg on top are the usual flavourings for a custard of this kind. Add extract off the heat, and infuse peel or a split vanilla bean in the milk while it scalds.
Boiled custard is the English-speaking kitchen's basic stirred custard, the same preparation the French call crème anglaise, and "float" is the name for the thin version served in a bowl with islands of meringue drifting on it, cousin to floating island and to œufs à la neige. The name is a small piece of misdirection that the author is careful to correct: the custard must never actually boil, and the double boiler specified is often said to have been the nineteenth-century solution to a stove whose heat could not be turned down. A pitcher of custard was the standard accompaniment to stewed, canned and fresh fruit, and to plain cake served with it.