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Cream Flavored with Coffee
Separate the whites and yolks of four eggs, put the yolks in a basin with four ounces of caster sugar, whip them well and mix in sufficient strong, freshly-made coffee to flavor. Pour one pint of milk into a saucepan and place over the fire until it is on the point of boiling, then stir it in gradually with the beaten eggs. Strain the mixture through a fine wire-sieve and pour it into cream cups. Put them in a stewpan with boiling water to three-fourths their height, boil gently until the cream is firm with the exception of a little spot in the middle. When cold turn the cream out of the cups onto a glass or fancy dish, and serve.
A stovetop coffee custard in the pot-de-crème family, thickened with yolks alone. The instructions are sound; only the units and the word "boil" need translating.
- The hinge: never let the water boilDespite "boil gently," the water bath should sit at a bare shiver, around 180F, and the custard itself must stay below about 175F. At a true rolling boil the yolks scramble and the cream weeps. The original's own test is the reliable one: pull the cups while a coin-sized spot at the center still trembles.
- Four ounces of caster sugarThat is a weight, not a volume: about 115 g, or a generous 1/2 cup of superfine sugar. Granulated works, though caster dissolves faster into raw yolks.
- "Cream cups"Small individual pots, roughly 3 to 4 fl oz each. Ramekins or espresso cups do the same job. This quantity should fill five or six of them, which is the yield the recipe never states.
- Coffee "to flavor"Genuinely unquantified. Strong brewed coffee or cooled espresso at 3 to 4 tablespoons gives a clear flavor without loosening the custard; much beyond a quarter cup begins to dilute the set.
- Tempering"Stir it in gradually with the beaten eggs" means the hot milk goes into the yolks in a thin stream while whisking, not the reverse. Straining afterward catches any threads that formed regardless.
- Oven methodIf you would rather not watch a stewpan, the same cups in a water bath at 325F take 25 to 35 minutes to reach the identical stage. Cover the pan loosely with foil to keep skins from forming.
- Timing on the stoveExpect 20 to 30 minutes covered, checking from 18. Small cups set fast, and a custard goes from silky to grainy in a couple of minutes.
- Turning outUnmolding only works after several hours of thorough chilling; a warm custard of this softness will collapse. Run a thin knife around the rim first. Serving them in the cups is no dishonor.
- The leftover whitesFour of them, with no use given here. They keep a week refrigerated, or freeze well.
Oscar Tschirky's book catalogs the dessert repertoire of a large American hotel kitchen at the turn of the twentieth century, and this is straightforwardly the French petit pot de crème au café under a plain English name — an egg-yolk custard set in individual pots, here poached in a stewpan rather than baked, the technique that separates it from a stirred custard sauce. The instruction to unmold the custards onto a glass dish is worth noting, since pots de crème were routinely served in their own pots in exactly this period.