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Tennies Danish Pudding
Beat up six eggs and add one quart of hot milk. Melt two cups of brown sugar in an omelet pan. Be careful not to burn it. When melted spread around sides of pan, then pour the hot custard into this, place the whole in a pan of hot water and bake until custard is done (about one-half hour). Serve hot.
This is a caramel custard — a flan or crème caramel under a Danish name — and the whole dish stands or falls on how the eggs meet the hot milk.
- Temper the eggsPouring a quart of hot milk into six beaten eggs all at once will scramble them. Add the milk in a thin stream while whisking, then strain the custard before it goes into the pan.
- Oven temperatureThe original gives none. A baked custard wants 325F; anything hotter and the edges curdle and weep before the centre sets. Half an hour is realistic only in a shallow pan — a deep dish may take 50 to 60 minutes.
- "Omelet pan"Likely a heavy, shallow pan with sloping sides, iron or thick tinned steel. Any ovenproof skillet or a cake pan set in the water bath will do, so long as it can take direct heat for the caramel.
- Brown sugar caramelTwo cups is generous and brown sugar is harder to work than white: the molasses darkens and smells scorched before the sugar has fully liquefied. Work over moderate heat, swirl rather than stir, and pull it off the moment it runs clear.
- Spreading the caramelIt stiffens as the pan cools and will set hard. Tilt the pan to coat the sides promptly, using a cloth or mitt, and accept an uneven coating rather than reheating it.
- The water bathHot water should come halfway up the outside of the custard pan. Set a folded towel or a rack underneath so the base is not in direct contact with the hot metal of the outer pan.
- Judging donenessThe custard is set when a knife inserted an inch from the edge comes out clean and the centre still trembles; an instant thermometer reads 170 to 175F. It carries on cooking out of the oven, so pull it early rather than late.
- Serving and yieldA quart of milk and six eggs feeds six to eight. Served hot, as directed, it is spooned from the pan with the caramel as sauce; left to cool and chilled, it can be turned out whole.
Baked caramel custards travel under a great many national labels — flan in Spain and Mexico, crème renversée in France, karamelrand in Denmark — and all of them rest on the same two facts: eggs set milk at a low temperature, and sugar cooked past the syrup stage turns bitter-sweet and dark. The Danish claim here is plausible in a general way; caramel-lined puddings were part of Danish home cooking, and Scandinavian immigrant households in the American Midwest kept such desserts going. The name may well be that of a contributor, Tennie, though nothing on the page confirms it.