Egg Custard
Yolks 2 eggs Few grains salt 2 tablespoons milk Beat eggs slightly, add milk and salt. Pour into small buttered cup, place in pan of hot water, and bake until firm; cool, remove from cup, and cut in fancy shapes with French vegetable cutters.
This is not a dessert custard but a garnish: a firm savoury royale, baked in a cup, chilled, then cut into shapes and dropped into clear soup at the moment of serving. The whole point is a custard solid enough to hold a cut edge.
- Oven temperatureThe original gives none. Bake in a slow to moderate oven, 300-325F; anything hotter puffs the custard and leaves it honeycombed with bubbles, which will not cut cleanly.
- The hinge: do not let the water boilThe pan of hot water should stay below a simmer for the whole bake. Boiling water is what turns a royale grainy and weeping, and a weeping custard clouds the consomme.
- TimingIn a small cup the custard sets in roughly 20-30 minutes. It is done when the centre no longer trembles and a knife point comes out clean.
- Beat slightlyTake this literally. Whisking air into the yolks gives a foamy, pitted custard; stir just until the yolks and milk are combined, and skim off any froth before pouring.
- ProportionsTwo yolks to two tablespoons of milk is a very rich, very firm ratio, which is deliberate: this custard must survive unmoulding and cutting. It is not the ratio for a spoon custard.
- UnmouldingThe recipe says only to cool it; letting it get thoroughly cold makes turning out easier. Run a thin knife round the edge, invert onto a plate, then slice into slabs -- a quarter to a third of an inch is a workable thickness -- before cutting shapes.
- French vegetable cuttersThese are the small tinned cutters sold now as aspic or truffle cutters, in diamonds, stars and crescents. A knife cutting neat diamonds does the same job.
- Yield and servingTwo yolks make a small quantity, probably enough garnish for four to six cups of clear soup. Add the shapes to the hot soup in the bowl at the last moment; simmering them breaks them up.
Custard cut into shapes for clear soup is the garnish French kitchens call royale. A truly clear consomme was the test of a careful cook, and having achieved one, the reward was to show it off with something small and precise floating in it: a diamond of custard, a disc of carrot, a few blanched peas. The little tinned vegetable cutters that make the shapes appear in kitchen-supply catalogues of the period alongside larding needles and jelly moulds.