Home › Cooking Hints and Recipes › Jellied Custards
Jellied Custards
1 package orange or lemon
1 egg gelatin
2 cups milk
1 cup boiling water
¼ cup sugar
Pinch of salt
½ teaspoon lemon extract
Beat egg, add sugar, salt and mix; pour on milk and scald in double boiler until it thickens.
Cool. Dissolve the lemon gelatin in the boiling water; when it begins to thicken add the custard.
Mold and chill until firm and serve with fruit.
A two-stage dessert: a thin stirred custard folded into a flavored gelatin. The whole thing hinges on getting both components to the same cool, syrupy state before they meet.
- What "1 package gelatin" meansThis is sweetened, flavored dessert gelatin (the orange or lemon boxes), not plain unflavored granules. A modern box is 3 oz and is rated to set 2 cups of liquid; here it is being asked to set 3 cups, so expect a soft, spoonable set rather than a mold that stands up sharply. Use two 3 oz boxes if you want a firm turn-out.
- Cook the custard to temperature, not to a clockEgg, sugar and 2 cups milk in a double boiler thickens at about 170-180F and will curdle above roughly 185F. Stir constantly and pull it the moment it coats the back of a spoon; the original's "until it thickens" is the whole instruction.
- Scald means heat, not boil'scald' means bringing milk to just under a simmer, around 180F, when bubbles ring the edge. Boiling it will set the egg into threads.
- Combine at the right moment"When it begins to thicken" is the hinge. If the gelatin is still hot the custard will thin out and separate into layers; if it has set past syrupy you will get lumps. Chill the gelatin until it moves like raw egg white, then whisk the cold custard in steadily.
- Chill the custard firstCool the custard over an ice bath and cover the surface to stop a skin forming. Both mixtures should be roughly the same temperature when they meet.
- Lemon extractHalf a teaspoon of extract in three cups is assertive by current taste and reads slightly medicinal against orange gelatin. A teaspoon of grated lemon zest gives the same lift with less perfume.
- Molding and unmoldingRinse the mold with cold water rather than oiling it. Four to six hours in the refrigerator; dip the mold in warm water for five seconds to release.
- YieldAbout 3 cups, which serves four to six in individual cups or one 1-quart mold. Fresh berries or sliced peaches are the intended accompaniment; fresh pineapple, kiwi or papaya contain enzymes that will keep the gelatin from setting at all.
Jellied custards belong to the moment when powdered gelatin turned an aristocratic kitchen project into a weeknight dessert. Setting a cream or custard with gelatin was old work — blancmanges and Bavarian creams had been made that way for a century — but it required clarifying isinglass or boiling down calves' feet, hours of labor for an unreliable result. Granulated gelatin sold in packets, and then the sweetened flavored versions that arrived at the turn of the twentieth century, collapsed all of that into a cup of boiling water. Recipes like this one, which lean on a commercial package for both the setting power and the flavoring and then enrich it with a homemade custard, are often taken as typical of American household cooking of the period: half convenience product, half from-scratch technique. Their spread also depended on cold storage of some kind, whether an icebox or a refrigerator, since a molded dessert is only practical if you have somewhere cold to leave it for an afternoon.