Custards, Boiled
INGREDIENTS for 8 custards.-1 pint of milk, 3 eggs, 3 oz. of loaf sugar, 3 laurel-leaves, or the rind of 1/2 lemon, or a few drops of essence of vanilla, 1 tablespoonful of brandy. AVERAGE COST, 9d.
Put the milk into a lined saucepan, with the sugar and whichever of the above flavourings may be preferred (the lemonrind flavours custards most deliciously), and let the milk steep by the side of the fire until it is well flavoured. Bring it to the point of boiling, then strain it into a basin; whisk the eggs well, and, when the milk has cooled a little, stir in the eggs, and strain this mixture into a jug. Place this jug in a saucepan of boiling water over the fire; keep stirring the custard one way until it thickens; but on no account allow it to reach the boiling point, as it will instantly curdle and be full of lumps.
CUSTARD PUDDING. ready Take it off the fire, stir in the brandy, and when this is well mixed with the custard, pour it into glasses, which should be rather more than three-parts full; grate a little nutmeg over the top, and the dish is ready for table. To make custards richer, ducks' eggs should be used, when obtainable; they add very much to the flavour and richness, and so many are not required as of the ordinary eggs, 2 ducks' eggs to the pint of milk making a delicious custard.
CUSTARDS IN GLASSES.
When desired extremely rich and good, cream should be substituted for the milk, and double the quantity of eggs used to those mentioned, omitting the whites.
TIME- hour to infuse the lemon-rind, about 10 minutes to stir the custard.
SEASONABLE at any time.
A plain stirred custard of the Victorian kind, thickened in a jug set in boiling water. One of the three flavourings offered is the reason this page carries a caution.
- The laurel leaves"Laurel" in a nineteenth-century English kitchen means cherry laurel, Prunus laurocerasus, whose leaves were bruised and steeped to give an almond flavour. Crushed cherry laurel leaves release hydrogen cyanide, and the dose from an infusion is not controllable in a domestic kitchen. This is not a matter of quantity to be adjusted: the ingredient has no place in food.
- Not the same as a bay leafModern readers often assume laurel and bay are interchangeable, because the culinary bay is Laurus nobilis, the true laurel. Victorian confectionery texts nonetheless use "laurel-leaves" for the cherry laurel, prized precisely for the prussic-acid note that bay does not have. If you want a custard of this type, work from a current recipe rather than from this one.
- Imperial pintMrs Beeton's pint is 20 fluid ounces against the US pint's 16; because the imperial fluid ounce is slightly smaller, that is about a fifth more by volume. The egg-to-milk ratio here is therefore leaner than the numbers suggest to an American cook.
- Loaf sugarRefined sugar sold in a hard cone, broken off and crushed before use. It is ordinary granulated white sugar in modern terms; the specification was about purity, not any particular flavour.
- Lined saucepanThat is, a copper pan tinned on the inside. The point was to keep an acid or egg mixture off bare copper. Any non-reactive pan answers the same purpose.
- By the side of the fireA range term for gentle sustained heat well below a simmer, used here only to draw flavour out of the rind. The jug standing in boiling water is a bain-marie, the period's answer to a double boiler.
- Duck eggsThe note that two duck eggs replace three hen eggs is sound arithmetic on volume and yolk richness. Duck eggs are still sold at farm shops and some markets, and are noticeably richer in fat.
- Average cost, 9dNinepence, that is, three-quarters of a shilling, for eight glasses. Such costings ran through the household books of the period and were part of their appeal to mistresses budgeting against a cook.
Boiled custard is an egg-thickened cream, and by Mrs Beeton's day it was a standard sweet sauce and a standard glass sweet of the middle-class table, poured over fruit, under trifle, or set out on its own with grated nutmeg. The flavourings offered here reflect the century's confectionery habits: lemon rind, the oldest and safest; vanilla essence, then relatively new and getting cheaper as commercial extracts spread; and laurel leaf, which belongs to an older tradition of drawing a bitter-almond note out of stone-fruit leaves and kernels. The brandy at the finish is stirred in off the heat, as the recipe directs.