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Boiled Custard
Dissolve six heaping tablespoonfuls of Blanchard Evaporated Eggs in three-quarters cup of milk and beat thoroughly. Mix the eggs gradually with a quart of milk and half a cup of sugar; boil in a dish set into another of boiling water; add flavoring. As soon as it comes to the boiling point remove it, or it will be liable to curdle and become lumpy. Put in a cold place until wanted. 3
A stirred custard sauce built on a now-vanished branded egg powder. The hinge is temperature: despite the name, the mixture must never actually boil.
- Blanchard Evaporated EggsA proprietary dried whole-egg powder of the sort sold to households around 1900; the brand no longer exists. Substitute fresh eggs, or modern whole-egg powder reconstituted to the package ratio.
- How many eggs that isThe conversion is genuinely uncertain, since "heaping" was never standardised and old powders varied in density. For a quart of milk, a conventional stirred custard uses about 5 whole eggs or 8 yolks; work from that rather than trying to reverse-engineer the tablespoons.
- "Boil in a dish set into another"This is a double boiler. Use a heatproof bowl over simmering water, with the bowl clear of the water itself.
- Never let it boilThe recipe's own warning is the whole technique. Egg proteins set around 180F; past that they clump and the custard curdles. Pull it at 170-175F on an instant-read thermometer, when it coats a spoon and a drawn finger leaves a clean track.
- Temper the eggsThe powder is first slaked in three-quarters cup of milk to dissolve it smoothly; the recipe does not say this milk is heated. With fresh eggs, whisk the sugar into them, then dribble in a cup of the hot milk before returning everything to the pot.
- Strain and coolPour through a fine sieve straight into a cold bowl to catch any set threads and stop the cooking. Press plastic wrap or buttered paper on the surface if you dislike a skin.
- FlavoringThe recipe does not specify. Vanilla is the usual choice, added off the heat so it does not cook off; nutmeg grated over the top is also traditional. A split vanilla bean steeped in the milk beforehand is better still.
- Yield and keepingAbout five cups, enough for six to eight servings poured over cake or fruit, or drunk from a cup as was common in the South. Refrigerate and use within three days.
- The trailing "3"Likely a numbering artifact carried over from the original printing rather than part of the method.
The Bride's Cook Book names a proprietary product in the middle of an otherwise ordinary custard, a feature of a good deal of cookery published around 1900, though the page alone does not establish that the book as a whole was manufacturer's advertising. Dried and evaporated eggs were a real convenience at the time, since fresh eggs were seasonal and expensive in winter, and shelf-stable egg powder promised the same custards and cakes year round. The dish itself is much older than the product: boiled custard, a stirred sauce of eggs, milk and sugar cooked over water, is essentially what the French call crème anglaise, and in the American South it survived as a drink served in cups at Christmas, close kin to eggnog without the spirits.