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Cream
1 pint scalded milk Yolks of 2 eggs 3 tablespoons brown sugar 1½ tablespoons cornstarch 3 drops almond extract Whites of 2 eggs 2 tablespoons sugar Beat the yolks with the brown sugar and cornstarch; pour on them the scalded milk; stir until the mixture thickens; flavor and pour into a baking dish. With the whites of the eggs and granulated sugar make a meringue; spread over the custard and brown in the oven.
A stirred cornstarch custard finished with a soft meringue — essentially a small baked custard pudding built on the stovetop. The original assumes you know how to keep eggs from scrambling, which is the whole of the difficulty.
- The hinge: temper, don't dumpPour the scalded milk onto the yolk-sugar-cornstarch mixture in a thin stream while whisking, then return everything to the pan over low heat. Poured in all at once, the yolks curdle and no amount of stirring recovers them.
- Cook the starch out"Stir until the mixture thickens" understates it — cornstarch needs to reach a bare simmer and hold there about a minute, or the finished cream tastes chalky. Use a heavy pan and a flat whisk or wooden spoon so nothing catches in the corners.
- Scalded milkHeated to just below boiling, when bubbles ring the edge and the surface steams, roughly 180F. In the era of raw milk this step also served as pasteurization; with modern milk it is simply a way to shorten the cooking.
- Browning the meringueNo temperature is given. Either 350F for 12-15 minutes, which sets the meringue through, or 425F for 4-5 minutes for color alone. The hotter route leaves the interior of the meringue barely cooked, so the slower oven is the better choice.
- Meringue techniqueBeat the whites to soft peaks before adding the 2 tablespoons sugar, then beat to firm and glossy. Spread it so it touches the rim of the dish all the way around, which keeps it from shrinking into an island as it bakes.
- Almond extractThree drops is deliberate and correct — modern extract is potent, and a full teaspoon would swamp a pint of custard. Measure by drop, not by splash.
- SugarsThe brown sugar in the custard is doing flavor work as much as sweetening; a light or medium brown gives the caramel note the recipe is after. The granulated sugar in the meringue should not be swapped for brown, which weeps and browns unevenly.
- Dish and yieldA pint of milk fills a 1-quart baking dish and serves four, generously three. Serve warm or at room temperature; refrigerating overnight makes the meringue weep.
Cornstarch-thickened desserts were often titled with the word "cream" in American cookbooks of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries — Spanish cream, Bavarian cream, and various stovetop "creams" thickened with cornstarch, arrowroot or gelatin rather than dairy fat — so the name here describes texture rather than an ingredient. Cornstarch was manufactured commercially in the United States from the 1840s onward. A dish like this uses two yolks and a spoonful and a half of starch in place of the larger number of eggs a plain baked custard would need, and the two leftover whites become the meringue, so nothing is wasted.