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Custard Sauce
1 pint (2 cups) milk 1 tablespoonful cornstarch 1 tablespoonful sugar 1/2 teaspoonful vanilla extract Moisten the cornstarch with a little of the milk, add the eggs and the sugar, beat well together, make the milk hot, add it to the cornstarch and eggs, stir well, return the mixture to the casserole, and let it thicken, stirring all the time, but it must not boil or it will curdle.
Add the vanilla extract.
Serve hot or cold.
A thin stirred custard thickened with both egg and a little cornstarch, meant to be poured over puddings and steamed or baked desserts. The printed ingredient list is defective and needs reading alongside the method.
- The missing eggsThe method calls for eggs twice but the ingredient list omits them entirely — a typesetting failure. A pint of milk with a tablespoon of cornstarch takes two whole eggs, or three yolks for a richer sauce; the original quantity is genuinely unrecoverable.
- "Casserole" means the panThe instruction to "return the mixture to the casserole" implies a vessel used over direct heat, not a baked dish. Any heavy saucepan works; thin metal encourages scorching at the base, which can make the sauce grainy.
- Do not let it boilThis is the hinge. Egg proteins set well below boiling, and once the mixture simmers it will scramble into visible curds no amount of stirring will undo. Hold it just under a simmer and pull it off as soon as it coats the spoon.
- Temper the eggsThe instruction to pour hot milk into the cornstarch-and-egg mixture is correct — add it in a thin stream while beating, not all at once, or the eggs seize before they disperse.
- A double boiler is saferDirect heat gives very little margin. Cooking over simmering water takes longer but makes curdling much less likely for anyone not watching the pan continuously.
- InsuranceIf it does begin to curdle, take it off the heat at once and strain through a fine sieve; the cornstarch means a lightly broken custard can often still be rescued.
- YieldAbout two cups, enough sauce for six to eight servings of pudding or fruit. It thickens noticeably as it cools; thin cold custard with a spoonful of milk if it sets too stiff.
Stirred custard of this kind — milk, egg, sugar, a flavouring — is one of the oldest sweet preparations in English cookery, and by the late nineteenth century it had settled into the standard accompaniment for boiled and steamed puddings. The cornstarch here is a shortcut and a safety net: pure egg custard demands close attention, while a spoonful of starch stabilises the mixture and gives some tolerance to the cook who looks away. Cornstarch became widely available in American and British kitchens over the second half of the 1800s, and cookbooks of this era show it steadily creeping into custards, blancmanges and cream fillings that earlier relied on eggs alone. Vanilla extract in place of a scalded vanilla bean or a bay leaf points the same way — a household sauce built for convenience rather than a confectioner's set piece.