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Laboratory Exercises (Baked Custard C scalded milk)
Baked Custard. 2 C. scalded milk 3 whole eggs or 5 yolks 4 T. sugar spk. salt nutmeg 1. Scald milk in double boiler. 2. Beat eggs slightly and add sugar and salt. 3. Add hot milk slowly, stirring constantly. 4. Strain into greased cups and grate nutmeg over the top. 5. Set into a pan of water and bake in a slow oven until firm. (Dip a silver knife into the center of the custard, if it comes out clean the custard is done.) 6. Set in ice box to chill.
CUSTARDS 7. When cold turn out of molds and serve plain or with preserved fruit. If the custard has been made with the yolks of eggs, it may be served with a soft custard sauce made with the whites, making a yellow and white dessert.
Soft Custard. 2 C. milk 2 eggs or 3 yolks or 3 whites t. vanilla 1. Scald milk in double boiler. 4 T. sugar spk. salt 2. Beat eggs slightly and add sugar and salt. (If the custard is made with the whites of the eggs add 2 T. of the cold milk to them before beating to keep them from being frothy.) 3. Add hot milk slowly, stirring constantly. 4. Cook in double boiler until thick. Stir while cooking to prevent lumping. 5. Remove from fire, strain and when cold add vanilla. 6. Serve as sauce for puddings, baked custards, etc., or may be served plain with cake as a simple dessert.
Floating Island. 2 C. scalded milk spk. salt 3 egg yolks 1/2 t. vanilla 4 T. granulated sugar 3 egg whites 3 T. powdered sugar 1. Make soft custard of first five ingredients. 2. Just before you are ready to serve, beat the whites of the eggs as stiffly as possible, then add the powdered sugar. (If allowed to stand long after being beaten the whites will settle and become watery.) 3. Pile the whites on the custard and serve cold.
Note.—Cocoanut or boiled rice may be added to the custard before the whites are put on or the cocoanut may be sprinkled over the whites.
Tapioca Cream. 2 T. minute tapioca or 1/3 C. sugar 4 T. pearl tapioca spk. salt 2 C. scalded milk 1 t. vanilla 2 eggs 1. Cook tapioca in milk until it is transparent. (The pearl tapioca will take longer to cook than the minute tapioca.) 2. Beat eggs and add sugar and salt. 3. Pour hot tapioca over the egg mixture, stirring constantly. 4. Cook in double boiler until it thickens. 5. When cool add flavoring. Serve cold.
Note. Tapioca cream may be made with the yolks of the eggs and a meringue made of the whites the same as for Floating Island. Fruit tapioca may be made by pouring the tapioca custard over any kind of sliced fruit, either fresh or canned.
Strawberry Custard. 2 C. scalded milk 3 egg yolks 4 T. sugar spk. salt t. vanilla 3 egg whites 3 T. powdered sugar 1 C. preserved strawberries stale cake 1. Make custard of first five ingredients. 2. Cut stale cake in triangular shaped pieces and cover the bottom of a glass dish with them.
CUSTARDS 3. Add layer of strawberries then another layer of cake and pour the custard over all. 4. Make a meringue of the whites and pile on top of the custard just before serving. Serve very cold. 152
Five variations on one lesson: milk thickened by egg. The abbreviations are the standard domestic-science shorthand of the period — C. is cup, T. tablespoon, t. teaspoon, and "spk." a speck, meaning a pinch.
- The hinge: heat controlEgg proteins set between roughly 160 and 180F and curdle above that. The double boiler and the pan of water under the baked custard exist for no other reason, so keep the water hot but never at a rolling boil.
- "A slow oven"Conventionally reckoned at about 300 to 325F, though period tables vary. At that temperature 2 cups of custard in individual cups should set in roughly 30 to 40 minutes; a single larger dish will take longer, perhaps 45 to 60.
- The knife testSilver is irrelevant — any thin blade works. Test slightly off-centre rather than dead centre and pull the custard when the middle still trembles; carryover heat finishes it, and a fully firm centre means it has already begun to weep.
- Straining is not optionalBoth the baked and the soft custard call for straining, and it is the step people skip. It removes the chalazae and any threads of egg that have already set, and it is the difference between a smooth custard and a grainy one.
- Soft custard doneness"Until it thickens" means until it coats the back of a spoon and a finger drawn through leaves a clear track. It will never get as thick as a baked custard, and if it looks like it might, it is curdling.
- Pearl tapiocaModern pearl tapioca generally wants soaking in cold water for an hour or more before it goes into the milk; "minute" tapioca is the pre-cooked granular kind still sold as quick-cooking tapioca and needs about five minutes. Cook until the grains are clear with no white core.
- The uncooked meringueThe whites piled on Floating Island and Strawberry Custard are raw. If serving anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immune-compromised, use pasteurised whites or bake the meringue briefly instead.
- CocoanutGenerally dried shredded coconut, though freshly grated was also used at this date. Sweetened flake will make an already sweet custard cloying.
- YieldEach of these is built on 2 cups of milk and will serve four, or six in small cups. "Ice box" means the period ice-cooled cabinet; use the refrigerator, and allow the moulded custards several hours to chill.
These pages appear to come from a manual written for school and college laboratories rather than for the home cook, and the sequence is a teaching device: the same milk, eggs and sugar are taken through a baked custard, a stirred custard, a custard with a meringue, one thickened additionally with starch, and one layered with cake, so a student could see for herself what changes when the heat, the vessel or the proportion of yolk to white changes. Egg cookery was the standard vehicle for this lesson in the domestic-science movement of the early twentieth century, since coagulation is visible, quick and unforgiving. The thrift is teaching too — a recipe that uses only yolks is immediately paired with one that uses up the whites. Floating Island, sometimes loosely associated with the French oeufs à la neige though the two are distinct preparations, is an eighteenth-century dessert whose name is usually traced to the islands of meringue drifting on the custard sea, and it reached American cookbooks long before this one; tapioca, made from cassava starch, was a colonial-trade import that had become a cheap household staple by the time this manual was printed.