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Cream with Burnt Sugar
Put two tablespoonfuls of sugar into a small saucepan with one tablespoonful of water, and stir it over the fire until slightly browned. Put five tablespoonfuls of caster-sugar into a saucepan with one pint of milk and the burnt sugar, flavoring to taste with rose-water or orange-water. Stir the milk over the fire and boil for about ten minutes, then move it to the side of the fire, beat the yolks of four eggs, and stir them gradually into the above mixture. Strain the mixture through a fine hair-sieve and fill some small cups with it; stand them in a stewpan filled with hot water to a depth of three-parts their height, and leave them at the side of the fire until the cream is thick. Take the cups out of the stewpan, sprinkle caster-sugar over them, and when slightly cooled, stand them on ice. In half an hour's time, they will be ready for serving.
A stovetop caramel custard from Oscar's Waldorf collection, written for a coal range where a pot could be nudged to a cooler spot. The whole recipe turns on keeping the egg mixture below a simmer.
- The hinge: gentle heat onlyOnce the yolks go in, the custard must never approach a boil or it will scramble and weep. Hold the water bath at 170-180F and pull the cups when the centers still wobble slightly; carryover heat finishes them.
- "Side of the fire"This means low, indirect heat. The easiest modern equivalent is a roasting pan of hot water in a 325F oven, 25-35 minutes for small cups, though a covered pan of barely trembling water on the lowest burner also works.
- Caster-sugarSuperfine sugar, sold as caster or baker's sugar. Granulated works throughout; whiz it briefly in a blender for the final sprinkling so it dissolves evenly.
- A pint of milkThe book was published in New York, so this is most likely a US pint, 2 cups; the wording elsewhere is English, so an imperial pint of 20 oz is not impossible, in which case a fifth yolk keeps the same ratio.
- Flavoring "to taste"Rose water and orange flower water vary enormously in strength between brands. Start with half a teaspoon of a concentrated one, up to two teaspoons of a mild one, and taste the milk before the yolks go in.
- Boiling the milk ten minutesProbably to reduce it a little, and boiling would also have made doubtful milk safer. With pasteurized milk, scalding it and letting it stand off the heat for a few minutes is enough; ten minutes of hard boiling will thicken it and can catch on the pan bottom.
- The caramelTwo tablespoons of sugar with one of water browns fast at the end. Take it to a deep amber and no further; scorched caramel turns the whole pint bitter, and it is easier to start over with fresh sugar than to correct it.
- Hair-sieveA horsehair sieve was the fine strainer of the period. Any fine-mesh strainer catches the bits of cooked egg and the chalaza, and is worth doing even if the custard looks smooth.
- Yield and finishingRoughly five 4-oz cups or ramekins. The sugar sprinkled on top here is a light dusting rather than a torched crust; if you want the crackled surface, chill fully first, then sugar and brown under a broiler or torch.
Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's celebrated maître d'hôtel, published his compendium in 1896, and much of it is French hotel cookery translated for American households. This is a caramel custard in the family of crème renversée au caramel: burnt sugar cooked into the milk rather than poured in the mold, so the color and the faint bitterness go all the way through. The rose water and orange flower water are the older flavorings of the pair, standard in English and French sweet cookery long before vanilla became cheap enough for daily use. Cooking the cups in a water bath at the side of the range, rather than in the oven, reflects a coal stove's geography, where the cook managed temperature by moving the pot rather than turning a dial.