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Cream Custard
1-3 cup butter. 1-3 cup flour.
Melt butter, and cream flour and butter together. Yolks of four eggs, one cup sugar, one and one-half cups sweet milk. Beat yolks, add sugar; when milk is scalded add flour and butter, then sugar and eggs. Cook in double boiler until thick. Add any flavoring.
A roux-thickened stirred custard — closer to a pastry cream than to a baked custard. The fractions in the original are printed with hyphens, which is how early presses set them.
- "1-3 cup" means one-third cupBoth the butter and the flour are 1/3 cup each. Note that 1/3 cup flour to 1 1/2 cups milk is a stiff ratio; expect something thick enough to fill a tart or a layer cake rather than to pour.
- Cream the flour into the melted butterAn uncooked butter-and-flour paste rather than a cooked roux; the recipe never returns it to the heat. Work it smooth with a spoon before it goes near the milk, or the custard may carry flour lumps.
- Scalded milkHeat the milk until it steams and shows a ring of small bubbles at the edge, around 180F. It does not need to boil.
- Add the eggs last, and slowlyThe order in the original matters: roux into the hot milk first, then the sugared yolks. Trickle a little of the hot mixture into the yolks and stir before returning them, or the yolks will scramble in threads.
- Double boiler, and whySimmering water below, not boiling, and the bowl clear of the water. The flour needs a few minutes at a good heat to lose its raw taste, but direct heat risks catching and curdling against the pan bottom. Stir constantly until it thickens.
- Flavoring"Any flavoring" would most likely have been vanilla or lemon extract, or a spoonful of sherry. Extracts are usually stirred in after the pan comes off the heat, since prolonged heating drives off the volatile flavour compounds.
- YieldSomewhat over two cups. It thickens further as it cools, so strain it while hot and cover the surface closely to keep a skin from forming.
Thickening a custard with flour as well as yolks is the technique the French call crème pâtissière; the flour buys insurance, since starch raises the temperature at which yolk proteins seize and lets a cook take the mixture hotter without curdling it. American books of the period often filed the same preparation under "cream custard," "cream filling," or "mock cream" depending on how it was to be used. The instruction to "add any flavoring" assumes a pantry stocked with bottled extracts and leaves the choice to the cook.