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Baked Custard
4 cups scalded milk 4 to 6 eggs 1/2 cup sugar 1/4 teaspoon salt Few gratings nutmeg Beat eggs slightly, add sugar and salt, pour on slowly scalded milk; strain in buttered mould, set in pan of hot water. Sprinkle with nutmeg, and bake in slow oven until firm, which may be readily determined by running a silver knife through custard; if knife comes out clean, custard is done. During baking, care must be taken that water surrounding mould does not reach boiling-point, or custard will whey. Always bear in mind that eggs and milk in combination must be cooked at a low temperature. For cup custards allow four eggs to four cups milk; for large moulded custard, six eggs; if less eggs are used custard is liable to crack when turned on a serving dish.
Farmer's custard is sound technique that needs only translation of oven language and a few numbers she assumed you knew.
- Slow ovenBake at 300-325F. Above that the egg proteins tighten faster than they set smoothly and the custard can weep or curdle. Farmer's own warning about the custard "wheying" is directed at the water bath reaching boiling-point rather than at the oven.
- Scalded milkHeat to about 180F, when a ring of small bubbles forms at the edge; do not boil. Scalding is generally explained as a carry-over from raw-milk practice, and it also shortens baking time and helps the sugar dissolve.
- Temper carefully"Pour on slowly" means in a thin stream while whisking, or the hot milk scrambles the eggs. Straining afterwards is not optional if you want a glassy set; it catches chalazae and any bits that did curdle.
- The water bathFill the pan with hot water to roughly two-thirds the height of the mould, and keep it below a simmer. A folded towel in the bottom of the pan insulates the base of the dish and steadies it.
- Egg ratioFour eggs to four cups milk gives cup custards soft enough to eat with a spoon; six eggs gives a mould firm enough to unmould whole, which is why Farmer warns that fewer eggs will crack when turned out. Modern large eggs may run slightly bigger than the eggs Farmer assumed, so six is ample.
- DonenessTest slightly off-centre rather than dead centre: the custard should still wobble as one mass in the middle, since carryover heat finishes it. A knife that comes out perfectly clean at the exact centre can mean it is already a little past ideal. An instant-read thermometer showing roughly 170-180F is the modern version of the same test.
- Timing and yieldIndividual cups take 30-40 minutes; a single large mould of four cups takes 55-75 minutes. The recipe serves six to eight.
- NutmegGrate it over the surface after the custard is in the mould, not into the mixture, so it stays on top and does not sink into a speckled band.
- UnmouldingChill thoroughly first. A hot custard has no structural strength and will slump; several hours cold in the mould is what makes a clean turn-out possible.
Baked custard descends from the medieval "crustade" -- a custard baked in a pastry crust, from which the word itself comes. By the time Fannie Farmer put it in the 1896 Boston Cooking-School Cook Book the crust had long been optional and the dish had become a staple of American home and invalid cookery, cheap, filling and easy on the stomach. Its place here is partly pedagogical: Farmer's whole method rested on precise level measurement, and custard is the classic demonstration case, where gentle heat is the difference between a smooth set and a watery, curdled one -- though her own oven language could only be the vague "slow oven," since calibrated oven heat was not available to her readers. Her line that "eggs and milk in combination must be cooked at a low temperature" is the same principle that governs crème anglaise, quiche and crème caramel, and it is still the first thing taught about custard today.