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Turned-Out Custard
1082. Mix with one pint of sweet milk half an ounce of shred isinglass, the yolks of four eggs well beaten, nine pounded bitter almonds; stir all well over a slow fire till the isinglass is dissolved; strain through a fine sieve or muslin, and pour into a shape. When cold, turn it out.
This is a Victorian moulded custard set with isinglass and flavoured with bitter almonds. The flavouring is the problem: bitter almonds are a cyanide source, and the quantity here is not trivial.
- Bitter almonds are toxicBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the nuts are crushed and wetted — exactly what pounding them into milk does. Nine nuts in a pint, shared among several people, is a flavouring quantity rather than a documented lethal dose, but it is not negligible. Their sale for eating is restricted or prohibited in many countries for this reason.
- Gentle heat does not remove itHydrogen cyanide is volatile and prolonged boiling drives some of it off, but this recipe holds the mixture over a slow fire only until the isinglass melts. Straining takes out the almond solids but not what has already dissolved into the milk, so the method does little to reduce the hazard.
- The eggs never reach a safe temperatureFour yolks are warmed only until the isinglass dissolves, which need not reach the 160F/71C usually given for egg safety, and the custard is then left to cool and set before being unmoulded and served cold.
- IsinglassA gelatin obtained from the swim bladders of sturgeon and other fish, sold in shreds or sheets and used as a setting agent before commercial powdered gelatin was widespread. Half an ounce to a pint gives a firm jelly stiff enough to turn out of a mould.
- "A shape"Here the mould into which the custard is poured, though the word was also used for the finished moulded dish: typically a metal or earthenware mould, often fluted or dome-shaped.
- If you want this dishUse a current recipe for a moulded almond custard, one that uses sweet almonds and brings the egg mixture to a proper temperature.
Turned-out or moulded creams were a fixture of the nineteenth-century English dessert table, where the point was as much architectural as culinary — a smooth pale dome unmoulded whole onto a dish, set firm by isinglass, calf's-foot jelly or, later, powdered gelatin. Bitter almonds were a common route to a strong marzipan-like flavour in such creams, blancmanges and ratafias, and cookery books of the period called for them freely, a few pounded nuts standing in for what we would now reach for as almond essence. Isinglass, meanwhile, links the sweet course to the brewery, where the same fish-derived gelatin was long used to clarify beer.