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Custard Cup Pudding
Beat up one egg and pour it into a well-buttered cup, and fill up with milk. Put the cup into a saucepan over the fire with enough boiling water to reach half-way, and boil slowly for twenty minutes. Have in readiness a hot plate onto which to turn the custard, and serve with sugar. Make as many of those as are needed.
A single-serving baked-in-water custard, sized by the teacup rather than by measurement. The one thing that matters is heat control: the water around the cups must stay just below a simmer or the egg sets grainy and weeps.
- The cupThe recipe specifies no size. A period teacup or breakfast cup of perhaps 6-8 oz would give roughly one egg to 5-6 oz of milk once the beaten egg is in, which is about the limit of dilution at which a custard will still turn out whole rather than have to be eaten from the cup.
- "Boil slowly"Do not let the water actually boil. Hold it at 180-185F, barely shivering, and the custard sets smooth; a rolling boil at 212F curdles egg protein and gives you sweet scrambled egg in a puddle of whey.
- Cover the cupsThe original leaves them open, which lets condensation drip in and a skin form. A square of buttered paper or foil over each cup is a small improvement that does not change the dish.
- TimingTwenty minutes is plausible for a single cup, but judge by the custard, not the clock. It is done when the centre wobbles as one piece and a knife slid in at the edge comes out clean; carryover heat finishes it.
- Turning outLet the cup stand two or three minutes off the heat, run a thin knife round the rim, then invert onto the warmed plate. Butter the cup properly, right to the lip, or it will tear.
- SugarThere is none in the custard itself; the sweetening is scattered over at the table, as with a nursery pudding. If you would rather sweeten the mixture, a scant tablespoon per egg and a few drops of vanilla is the usual proportion.
- YieldOne cup per person. The recipe scales exactly, but crowd the saucepan and the water will not circulate evenly, so use a wide pan or a roasting tin of hot water in a 325F oven instead.
Cup custard is the plainest member of a family that runs from crème caramel to the English baked custard, and its presence in Oscar Tschirky's book is a reminder that a great hotel kitchen turned out convalescent and children's food alongside the terrapin and canvasback. The steamed cup method is often said to predate reliable ovens: set in a saucepan of water, the custard cannot exceed the temperature of its bath, which is precisely the protection an egg mixture needs. Oscar Tschirky was maître d'hôtel of the Waldorf, not a chef, and the book he assembled in 1896 gathers the house's working formulas in this same terse register, with quantities left to the cook's judgment, down to the instruction to "make as many of those as are needed."