Home › Cold Desserts › Boiled Custard
Boiled Custard
2 cups scalded milk Yolks 3 eggs 1/4 cup sugar 1/8 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon vanilla Beat eggs slightly, add sugar and salt; stir constantly while adding gradually hot milk. Cook in double boiler, continue stirring until mixture thickens and a coating is formed on the spoon, strain immediately; chill and flavor. If cooked too long the custard will curdle; should this happen, by using an egg-beater it may be restored to a smooth consistency, but custard will not be as thick. Eggs should be beaten slightly for custard, that it may be of smooth, thick consistency. To prevent scum from forming, cover with a perforated tin. When eggs are scarce, use yolks two eggs and one-half tablespoon corn-starch.
A stirred custard sauce, the ancestor of crème anglaise. It is one of those recipes where nothing goes wrong until it all goes wrong at once, so the temperature matters more than the clock.
- The hinge: 175-180FThe coating stage the recipe describes happens at about 175-180F (80-82C); at roughly 185F the yolks scramble. An instant-read thermometer removes all the guesswork the original could not offer. Pull it from the heat the moment a drawn finger leaves a clean track across the back of the spoon.
- Scalded milkScalding means heating to just below the boil, until bubbles form around the rim, around 180F. Farmer's practice was probably in part about unpasteurised milk, but it also shortens cooking time and helps dissolve the sugar.
- Tempering"Stir constantly while adding gradually hot milk" is the whole technique. Add the hot milk to the yolks in a thin stream, not the reverse, or the yolks set on contact.
- Double boilerUse a heatproof bowl over barely simmering water, with the base clear of the water. A heavy saucepan over low heat works and is faster, but leaves no margin for inattention.
- The rescueThe egg-beater trick works up to a point. A stick blender does it better, and straining through a fine sieve catches the set flecks. Farmer's warning holds: a rescued custard is thinner.
- Flavour lastThe vanilla goes in after cooking, as directed, since the volatile aromatics cook off. Chill with a lid or plastic film touching the surface rather than the "perforated tin" the book suggests.
- Cornstarch variationThe half tablespoon of cornstarch with two yolks helps stabilise the custard against curdling as well as stretching the eggs. The recipe does not alter the method, but starch needs fairly high heat to thicken fully and lose its raw taste.
- YieldAbout 2 cups of sauce for fruit, cake or steamed pudding. Best used within a couple of days, refrigerated.
Boiled custard is a misnomer inherited from older English cookery, where "boiled" could mean cooked in liquid over water rather than baked; a genuinely boiled custard is a ruined one, as Farmer's own warning makes clear. The distinction between this stirred sauce and the baked cup custard that sets in the oven turns on a principle of egg cookery: egg proteins coagulate over a narrow range of temperature, and the cook's job is to stop just short of the point where they clump. Fannie Farmer's book was written for a generation learning chemistry alongside cookery, which is why the recipe explains the failure and the repair as carefully as the method. The note on what to do "when eggs are scarce" is a reminder that eggs were seasonal and expensive in 1896, laying dropping off sharply in winter, and that cornstarch was the household's cheap insurance.