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Custard Pudding, Baked
INGREDIENTS for pudding for 4 or 5 persons. -1½ pint of milk, the rind of lemon, lb. of moist sugar, 3 eggs. AVERAGE COST, 7d.
Put the milk into a saucepan with the sugar and lemon-rind, and let this infuse for about hour, or until the milk is well flavoured: whisk the yolks and whites; pour the milk to them, stirring all the while; then have ready a pie-dish, lined at the edge with paste ready baked; strain the custard into the dish, grate a little nutmeg over the top, and bake in a very slow oven for about 1/2 hour or rather longer. The flavour of this pudding may be varied by substituting bitter almonds for the lemon-rind; and it may be very much enriched by using half cream and half milk, and doubling the quantity of eggs.
TIME. to hour.
SEASONABLE at any time.
CUSTARD TARTLETS. over them the milk, and stir the mixture well. Butter a basin that will exactly hold it; put in the custard and tie a floured cloth over; plunge it into boiling water, and turn it about for a few minutes, to prevent the flour from settling in one part. Boil it slowly for 1/2 hour ; turn it out of the basin, and serve. The pudding may be garnished with red-currant jelly, and sweet sauce may be sent to table with it.
TIME. hour.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Note. Very nice custards and custard puddings may be quickly made by using Goodall, Backhouse and Co.'s or A. Bird and Sons' cus- Sons' custard powder.
A plain baked custard set in a pastry-edged dish, and the method is more forgiving than the vague timings suggest. The whole thing turns on gentle heat.
- The hinge: keep the oven lowThe hinge: keep the oven low. The book gives no temperatures; "a very slow oven" is usually taken as somewhere around 250-300F, and it should not be pushed higher. Custard sets at around 175-180F internally; above that the eggs tighten and weep, leaving a watery, pitted pudding. Setting the pie-dish in a roasting tin of hot water is the surest insurance, though the original does not call for it.
- MeasuresAn imperial 1½ pints is 30 fl oz, or about 3½ US cups of milk. Three eggs to that quantity gives a soft, spoonable set rather than a sliceable one; more eggs will give a firmer set.
- Moist sugarMoist sugar is unrefined sugar with some molasses still in it, closest to today's light brown sugar. It will tint the custard beige. The quantity is not recoverable from this text; for 30 fl oz of milk, 3 to 4 oz of sugar gives a sweet but not cloying custard.
- Infusing the lemonPare the rind in wide strips with no white pith, warm it in the milk, then leave it off the heat about half an hour. Strain it out before the custard goes into the dish, as the recipe directs.
- Do not use the bitter almond variationBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide, and their sale for eating is prohibited in the United States and restricted elsewhere. Where a Victorian cook reached for them, use a few drops of almond extract instead.
- The pastry edgeOnly a band of pastry around the rim is wanted, baked before the custard goes in. A full blind-baked base under a liquid custard will go soft; the rim exists to give the spoon something to break against and to dress the dish.
- Judging when it is doneHalf an hour is optimistic for this volume at so low a heat; expect 45 to 60 minutes. Pull it when the outside is set and the centre still trembles as a single mass under a tap on the dish; it firms as it cools.
- YieldFour to five servings, as stated. It is best barely warm or at room temperature, and will keep two days covered in the refrigerator.
Baked custard of this kind was the backbone of English nursery and invalid cookery long before Mrs Beeton set it down: milk, eggs, sugar and a flavouring, with nutmeg grated over the top as it had been since the seventeenth century, when nutmeg was still costly enough to signal care. The instruction to enrich it with cream and double the eggs, or to line the dish with pastry, shows the same base recipe scaling up or down the household budget, which is why the book gives an average cost in pence. The closing note is worth reading as commercial history rather than advice: Alfred Bird's egg-free custard powder, generally traced to the 1830s, and Goodall, Backhouse's rival product had by the later editions of Beeton become respectable enough to be recommended in the same breath as the real thing.