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The Sauce (Put the milk on to boil beat)
Put the milk on to boil, beat the yolks of the eggs and a half cup of sugar together until light, and stir them into a the boiling milk. Stir and cook two minutes. Take from the fire, add the vanilla, and turn out to cool. Serve the pudding with the sauce poured around it.
This is a stirred custard sauce — crème anglaise under a plainer name — written as an appendix to whatever pudding it accompanied. The quantities of milk, eggs and vanilla belong to the parent recipe and are not repeated here.
- Missing quantitiesOnly the half cup of sugar is given. A standard ratio for this style of sauce is 1 pint (2 cups) milk to 5 or 6 egg yolks with that half cup of sugar; without the head recipe there is no way to know the author's exact proportions.
- Do not let it boil againThis is the hinge. Once the yolks go in, the mixture must stay below about 180F. "Stir and cook two minutes" over direct heat will scramble the eggs unless the pan is pulled to a low flame or set over simmering water. Cook until it coats the back of a spoon and a drawn finger leaves a clean track.
- Temper the yolksPouring beaten yolks straight into boiling milk, as written, is asking for lumps. Whisk a ladle of the hot milk into the yolks first, then return the whole to the pan.
- InsuranceStraining the finished sauce through a fine sieve as it comes off the heat catches any threads of set egg and the chalazae. A pinch of cornstarch beaten in with the yolks also stabilises it against curdling, though it slightly dulls the texture.
- VanillaAdded off the heat, as directed, because the aroma is volatile. If you use a split bean rather than extract, infuse it in the milk during the initial heating and remove it before serving.
- Cooling"Turn out to cool" means into a cold bowl, not left in the hot pan, where residual heat keeps cooking the eggs. Cover the surface or stir occasionally to prevent a skin.
- Yield and servingIf a pint of milk is assumed, the sauce comes to roughly 2 1/2 cups, enough for perhaps six to eight servings poured around a moulded pudding. Two or three days refrigerated is the practical limit; the recipe directs it to be cooled, so it is served cold.
Sauces of this type — milk or cream thickened with egg yolk alone, sweetened and flavoured with vanilla — were known in nineteenth-century American kitchens simply as boiled custard or custard sauce, and in French practice as crème anglaise, the English cream. The name is traditionally taken to reflect an association with British puddings, though this is a customary explanation rather than a documented one. Cold moulded puddings, blancmanges and gelatines are bland and stiff on their own and take well to a cool pouring sauce around the base rather than a hot one over the top. The instruction to serve it poured around, not over, keeps the moulded shape visible.