Home › Recipes › Corn Starch Pastry Cream
Corn Starch Pastry Cream
1 pint of water or milk. 5 ounces of white sugar. 2 ounces of corn starch. 2 ounces of butter. 5 yolks of eggs. Flavoring.
Boil the water or milk with the sugar in it. Mix the starch with a little water extra; pour it in the saucepan and stir up. Then before it has boiled again, add the eggs and butter and stir till the mixture becomes quite thick--perhaps ten minutes. Flavor when cool.
VARIATION.--A small ripe lemon cut in shreds--the seeds thrown away--boiled with the sugar and water, makes or the preceding a lemon cream pie filling. It should be only half-cooked over the fire, and allowed to set in the pies in the oven.
A straightforward starch-thickened pastry cream, given in weights as a professional bakeshop would. Two details need attention: the ingredient list is by weight, and the ten-minute stir after the yolks go in is longer than any modern cook would risk.
- The measurements are weightsA pint is 2 cups. Five ounces of sugar is about ¾ cup; 2 ounces of cornstarch is about 7 tablespoons, and 2 ounces of butter is 4 tablespoons. Scaling by volume instead of weight will throw the starch ratio off badly.
- Milk, not waterThe recipe offers either. Whole milk gives the texture and flavor expected of pastry cream today; water yields a leaner, less rich version, worth choosing only if the cream must be dairy-light.
- Temper the yolksThe instruction to "add the eggs" to a nearly boiling pan will scramble them. Whisk the yolks in a bowl, stream in a ladle of the hot starch mixture while whisking, then return everything to the pan.
- Ten minutes is too longOnce the yolks are in, the cream needs 1 to 2 minutes at a gentle bubble, whisking constantly. That is long enough to gelatinize the starch and to deactivate the amylase in the yolks, which otherwise thins the finished cream. Ten minutes over heat risks a grainy, curdled result and a scorched bottom.
- Butter off the heatBeat the butter in after the pan comes off the burner. It emulsifies into the hot cream and gives the gloss; cooked in from the start it tends to separate.
- FlavoringLeft open in the original; vanilla, lemon, or almond would all suit. Add it after the cream has cooled somewhat, as the original says, since volatile flavors boil away.
- The lemon variationBoiling a whole shredded lemon, pith and peel together, gives a markedly bitter edge. Zest plus the strained juice of one lemon delivers the same flavor without it. The half-cooked filling set in the shell in the oven is essentially a baked lemon custard pie and needs to reach a firm set through the center.
- Storage and yieldThis makes roughly 3 cups, enough to fill one 9-inch shell or a dozen small tarts. Press plastic wrap directly onto the surface to stop a skin forming, chill, and use within two days.
Cornstarch pastry cream belongs to the second half of the nineteenth century, when commercially milled corn starch became cheap and reliable in American kitchens and bakers began using it in place of, or alongside, flour to thicken custards. Starch does two things a flour-and-egg custard cannot: it sets firmly enough to slice in a pie, and it tolerates the higher heat needed to cook the starch through without weeping. The formula is given in ounces, and it offers water as an alternative to milk. The lemon variation is half-cooked on the stove and finished in the shell.