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Almonds with Eggs (Tablespoons sugar Grated rind)
1 cup milk. 2 tablespoons sugar Grated rind of 1 lemon 1 tablespoon butter 1 tablespoon flour 3 eggs 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1/2 teaspoon almond extract 3 ounces chopped almonds White of 1 egg 1 tablespoon sugar Few shredded almonds Put the milk into a saucepan with the sugar and lemon rind and allow it to simmer gently for half an hour. Blend the butter and flour; add the milk mixture; stir until it boils; then cook for five minutes. Beat the eggs; add the flavorings and almonds, and stir all into the first mixture. Stir with a wooden spoon over the fire until thick like batter; then turn into a baking dish. Cover with a meringue made from the white of egg and sugar; brown in the oven; sprinkle with shredded almonds and serve hot. • •
A baked almond custard set with flour, given a meringue lid. The ingredient list as printed is missing its first line — the milk — even though the method calls for it, so read the whole method before you start.
- The missing milkThe method opens by simmering milk with the sugar and lemon rind, but no quantity survives in the list. Against 1 tablespoon each of butter and flour and 3 eggs, about a pint (2 cups) is a reasonable guess, though the eggs rather than the flour do most of the thickening. Treat the figure as a reconstruction, not the original.
- The hinge: heat control on the egg stageOnce the beaten eggs go into the hot flour-thickened milk, the pan must stay below a simmer. Bring it back to the boil and the eggs scramble into grains that no amount of stirring will smooth. Low heat, constant motion, off the burner as soon as it mounds on the spoon.
- Temper before combiningThe original says simply to stir the eggs "into the first mixture." Add a ladle or two of the hot milk to the beaten eggs first, whisking, then return the lot to the pan.
- Infusing the rindHalf an hour of gentle simmering will reduce the milk noticeably; keep it barely trembling, covered, and top back up if it has thinned out. Pare the rind in wide strips rather than grating so you can lift it out; grated zest stays in as specks.
- Oven temperatureOnly the meringue is baked, and the original gives no oven direction beyond "brown in the oven." A moderate oven, around 350F, for 12-15 minutes will set and color it; hotter browns the peaks faster but leaves the meringue slack inside. The custard underneath is already cooked, so you are only after color.
- Meringue proportionsOne egg white to one tablespoon sugar is a very lean, old-style meringue that weeps easily. Beat to firm peaks, add the sugar a little at a time once the white is foamy, and spread it so it touches the rim of the dish all round to stop it sliding.
- AlmondsThree ounces chopped is roughly 3/4 cup. "Shredded" almonds means what we now sell as slivered or flaked; toast them lightly before scattering, since they go on after baking and will otherwise taste raw.
- Yield and servingFills a 1-quart baking dish and serves four to six. It is meant to go to table hot, and it does not reheat well — the meringue collapses and the custard weeps.
- Why it is a "meat substitute"Why it might be a "meat substitute" -- If the page belongs to a meat-substitutes section, it was meant as a main dish for a meatless day rather than dessert; the page itself carries no heading to confirm this. Modern palates will read it as a pudding; serve it accordingly.
Flour-thickened, egg-enriched almond custards descend from a long European line of almond puddings and blancmanges, dishes that were valued in fasting kitchens precisely because ground almonds and almond "milk" stood in for flesh and, in stricter periods, for dairy. Cookbooks of the early twentieth century often grouped eggs, cheese, nuts and legumes under headings like "Meat Substitutes," the new nutritional teaching counting them as protein equivalents. The paired vanilla and almond extracts are a period marker of their own; commercial flavoring extracts had become cheap and reliable enough that a home cook could reach for a bottle where an earlier one would have pounded bitter almonds in a mortar.