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Caramel Cream
Put a breakfast cupful of moist sugar into a sugar-boiling pan, hold it over a slow fire, stir it gently, and when it is a dark-brown, pour it onto the bottom of a charlotte-mould and let it cool. Beat six or eight eggs in a basin with three or more yolks, add one quart of milk, and beat again. Then add one pound of caster-sugar and a little lemon-peel. Ten minutes later, pass the liquid through a sieve into the mould with the caramel, having previously buttered the mould round the sides. Place the mould in a stewpan on a trivet, pour round some hot water so that it will reach to half the height of the mould, let the water boil up, and then draw the stewpan back, or if heated on a gas-stove (which is best) turn low, so that the liquid will preserve the same degree of heat without boiling. Cover the stewpan, place hot ashes on its lid, and let the preparation poach for at least an hour, allowing the cream to cool in the water. When time to serve, turn it out onto a dish, and garnish round with sweet biscuits and crystallized fruits, angelica, or what fancy may suggest.
This is a classic crème renversée — baked caramel custard — cooked in a covered pan of water on the stovetop rather than in the oven. The method translates directly to a modern bain-marie.
- The hinge: the water must never boilOnce the custard is in the water bath, the water should sit at a bare tremble, around 180F. If it boils, the eggs curdle and the cream weeps when turned out. The instruction to "draw the stewpan back" and the hot ashes on the lid are both about holding steady, gentle heat from above and below; a 325F oven does the same job with less fuss.
- Breakfast cupfulA breakfast cup is roughly 8 to 10 fl oz, so read it as about one cup of sugar for the caramel.
- Moist sugar and caster sugar"Moist sugar" is damp unrefined sugar, closest to today's light brown or turbinado — it caramelizes fast and browns early. Caster sugar is superfine white sugar; granulated dissolves fine in a liquid custard.
- A pound of sugar is a lotOne pound is about 2 1/4 cups for a single quart of milk, which reflects Victorian sweetness. Modern crème caramel of this size takes closer to 3/4 cup, and the caramel layer adds more.
- Charlotte mouldA tall straight-sided tin of about 2 quarts. Any deep metal mould, souffle dish or loaf tin of that capacity works. Butter the sides only, as directed — the caramel in the base handles the bottom.
- Lemon-peelUse pared zest with no white pith, and steep it in the milk warmed to a scald rather than dropping it into the cold liquid; strain it out at the sieving step. The "ten minutes later" in the original may be intended as that infusion time, though the recipe does not say so.
- Doneness and coolingAn hour of poaching is about right for this depth; the custard is set when the center barely wobbles, or reads 175 to 180F. Cooling in its own water bath, as instructed, prevents cracking, but chill it several hours in the refrigerator before unmolding or it will slump.
- YieldA quart of milk with eight or more eggs fills a 2-quart mould and serves 8 to 10.
Caramel custard turned out of its mould is French kitchen repertoire — crème renversée au caramel — and by the end of the nineteenth century it appeared on hotel dessert lists on both sides of the Atlantic: cheap in materials, made ahead, and impressive when unmoulded whole. Details that read oddly to a domestic cook — the sugar-boiling pan, the trivet, the hot ashes banked on the lid to give top heat — belong to a coal-range kitchen. The garnish of sweet biscuits, crystallized fruit and angelica — the candied stems of Angelica archangelica, then a common confectioner's green — was the period's way of dressing a plain cream for the dining room. The parenthetical preference for a gas stove is a small marker of its moment, gas ranges being the new and better tool for holding a low, even heat.