Royal Custard
4 eggs 1 egg white 1 gill cream 1/2 teaspoon salt Few grains nutmeg Few grains cayenne Beat the egg and seasonings together, add 1 gill of cream or the same quantity of milk, strain through fine strainer into buttered timbale moulds. Set these moulds in saucepan with boiling water reaching to one-half their height, bake until firm. Cool, cut in slices or fancy shapes and add to consomme. 1/2 teaspoon of onion juice may be added before cooked.
This is a soup garnish rather than a dessert custard: a firm, savoury royale baked in a water bath, chilled, and cut into shapes to float in clear consommé. The ratio is what makes it work.
- A gillA gill is half a cup, 4 fl oz. Four whole eggs plus one white to half a cup of cream gives a stiff custard that holds a clean edge when cut, which is the entire point here. Do not loosen it with extra liquid.
- Oven, not stovetopOven or stovetop? -- The instruction reads oddly: the moulds go into a saucepan of boiling water, yet the recipe says 'bake'. The recipe gives neither temperature nor time. If baking, a moderate oven of roughly 325-350F until the centre is just set -- perhaps 20-30 minutes for small moulds -- is the usual modern reading; hotter and the custard puffs, weeps and goes porous.
- Judge by set, not clockThe custard is done at about 175-180F internal, when a knife tip comes out clean and the surface no longer ripples. Overbaked royale turns rubbery and grainy and will crumble instead of slicing.
- Timbale mouldsSmall straight-sided metal dariole or timbale cups. Ramekins work, but a shallow buttered pan, filled to about half an inch, is easier still if you only want diamonds and rounds.
- Strain, and mean itStraining removes chalazae and any beaten-in bubbles. Skim foam off the surface before baking as well; a bubbled royale looks like sponge in a clear soup.
- Onion juiceGrate an onion and press the pulp through a sieve, or grate on a microplane and squeeze. A half teaspoon is enough to season without clouding the custard.
- Cooling and cuttingChill thoroughly before unmoulding, then slice about a quarter inch thick and cut with a small aspic cutter or a knife. Add to hot consommé at the last moment, in the tureen or the plate, so the pieces warm through without breaking up.
- YieldThis quantity makes enough garnish for roughly eight to ten servings of consommé. It keeps covered in the refrigerator for a day or two.
Royal custard is the English name for the French royale, the classic garnish that turns a plain clear soup into consommé à la royale. Cutting a firm savoury custard into diamonds, rounds and stars was standard practice in nineteenth-century professional kitchens, where the appearance of a clear soup was judged as closely as its flavour, and the technique also appears in American household cookery of the late 1800s. Variations on the same custard base, tinted green with spinach purée or red with tomato, were common; the plain version here is the foundation for all of them.