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Date Custard
2 egg yolks. 1/4 C sugar. 2 C milk. 1½ T cornstarch 1/2 C chopped dates 1 t vanilla Beat egg yolks, add sugar and a pinch of salt. Add this to milk and cook, adding cornstarch which has been softened in water, stirring constantly. Cook until thick, and add chopped dates and vanilla. Mrs. Fern Gover. 1 pkg. dates 1 C walnut meats
This is a stirred cornstarch custard, and like many community-cookbook entries it assumes the cook already knows the proportions. The printed ingredient list is incomplete, so treat the quantities below as a reconstruction rather than the original.
- Missing quantitiesNo amounts are given for egg yolks, sugar or milk. A custard using 1½ tablespoons cornstarch conventionally takes about 2 cups milk, 2 egg yolks and 1/3 to 1/2 cup sugar; with less milk it will set noticeably firmer.
- The stray line at the end"1 pkg. dates / 1 C walnut meats" sits after the signature and matches nothing in the method; it may be stray type from an adjacent recipe. The custard itself calls for 1/2 cup chopped dates and no nuts.
- Softening the cornstarch"Softened in water" means slurried smooth in two or three tablespoons of cold water. Cornstarch dropped dry into hot milk sets into lumps that no amount of stirring will break up.
- How thick, and how hotCook over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens and just begins to bubble. Cornstarch needs to reach a near-boil to lose its raw flavour and reach full thickening power; the starch protects the yolks, but take the pan off the heat as soon as it has thickened.
- Order of operationsThe instruction to add yolks and sugar "to milk" works best if the milk is warmed first and ladled slowly into the yolks, then returned to the pan. Cold yolks stirred into hot milk in one go will scramble at the edges.
- The datesAdd them off the heat, as written. Dates are already sweet and soft; simmering them in the custard turns them to threads and thins the set as their sugar dissolves. Snip them with scissors rather than chopping, and toss them in a little of the dry sugar to keep them from clumping.
- Leftover whitesOnly the yolks are used. The whites will keep a week refrigerated.
- Yield and servingOn the reconstructed quantities, about 2 cups, or four small dishes. Chill at least three hours; press plastic wrap onto the surface to prevent a skin. Cornstarch custards weep if frozen, and the custard is best eaten within a couple of days.
Church and society cookbooks of this kind were often compiled by subscription, each contributor sending in a favourite over her own name, which may explain why quantities go missing so often: the copy was set from handwritten cards and the contributor already knew what she meant. Cornstarch custard is a thrifty American relative of blancmange, a dish that shifted through the nineteenth century from an almond-milk jelly to a starch-thickened milk pudding as boxed cornstarch became widely available. Dates were sold pressed into blocks or in packages, dependable pantry sweetness in a place with no local fruit for much of the year, and they turn up across the dessert sections of these books in puddings, bar cookies and steamed loaves. Mrs. Gover's contribution is a stovetop dessert requiring no oven and no fresh fruit, which is very much the logic of the genre.