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The Children's Birthday Dish
Boil up a quart of milk, sweeten it with nearly half a pound of sugar, and flavor with vanilla. Let it get cold. Beat up six eggs, both yolks and whites, mix them with the milk, put it all in a fireproof dish and cook very gently. Cover the top before you serve it with ratafia biscuits. A Frangipani Put your saucepan on the table and break in it two eggs. Mix these with two dessert-spoonfuls of flour. Add a pint of milk, and put it on the fire, stirring always one way. Let it cook for a quarter of an hour, stirring with one hand, while with the other sprinkle in powdered sugar and ground almonds. Turn out to get cold, and cut in squares.
Two puddings run together on the page: a baked vanilla custard and a stovetop almond frangipane cut into squares. Both are workable, but the custard's "cook very gently" is doing a lot of unspoken work.
- The hinge: gentle means a water bathAn egg custard of six eggs to a quart of milk sets at 170-175F and curdles not far above that. Stand the dish in a roasting pan of hot water and bake at 325F until the centre is just barely wobbly, roughly 45-60 minutes depending on the depth of the dish.
- "Fireproof dish"In 1915 this meant an earthenware or fireproof china baking dish that could go straight into the oven. Any 2-quart ceramic or glass baking dish works.
- Sugar quantityNearly half a pound is about 1 cup, which is sweet by modern taste for a quart of milk. Two-thirds of a cup gives a custard that still tastes of egg and vanilla.
- Cool the milk before the eggsThe instruction to let the sweetened milk get cold is not fussiness. Pouring hot milk onto whole beaten eggs scrambles them; if you are in a hurry, temper by trickling the warm milk into the eggs while whisking.
- Ratafia biscuitsSmall, hard, domed almond macaroons, once sold by the tin in Britain. Amaretti di Saronno are the closest thing on a shelf now. Add them at the moment of serving or they go soft.
- Dessert-spoonfulsA British dessert spoon is about 2 teaspoons, so two of them is roughly 4 teaspoons of flour to a pint of milk. That is very little thickening for a mixture meant to be cut in squares; expect to need closer to 4-5 tablespoons if you want it firm enough to slice.
- Which pintThe book is British, so the pint is 20 fl oz, not 16. Scale the flour accordingly.
- Stirring always one wayKitchen folklore rather than chemistry. What matters is constant motion and low heat: bring the frangipane to a bare simmer so the flour cooks out, which may take less than the full quarter hour.
- YieldThe custard serves six to eight. The frangipane, poured about half an inch deep into a lined pan, gives roughly a dozen squares.
The Belgian Cook Book was compiled in Britain in 1915 from recipes dictated by Belgian refugees who had fled the German invasion, and sold to raise money for their relief; the domestic detail in it -- a saucepan set straight on the table, eggs broken into it -- is the sound of home cooks recalling their own kitchens rather than writing for print. Frangipane is an almond cream used across French and Belgian pastry, and its name is traditionally traced to an Italian named Frangipani associated with an almond-scented perfume, though the link is repeated more often than it is documented. Ratafia biscuits are usually said to take their name from the almond-flavoured cordial of the same name.