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Vanilla Custard
(1.) Large--Boil one quart of cream with twelve ounces of sugar and a vanilla bean. Beat thoroughly the yolks of twelve eggs and pour the boiling cream over them. Set the mixture on the fire again for one minute. The custard will not froth in the freezer if cooked much, but should be taken off and strained as soon as slightly thickened. Freeze and beat lightly and serve as required. (2.) Small--Pour two and one-half pints of boiling milk on a vanilla bean that has been broken into small pieces and allow it to soak for an hour. Beat the yolks of five eggs with two tablespoonfuls of fine sugar, mix them in with the boiled milk and strain the whole through a pointed strainer. Fill some cups with the custard mixture, stand them in a flat stewpan, surround them with boiling water to a little more than half their height and stand the stewpan on a slow fire to keep the water just simmering for fifteen or twenty minutes. When the custards are set let them cool in the water, then wipe the cups, and serve at once.
Two versions of the same French custard base: the first is an ice cream (crème anglaise churned in a freezer), the second a set custard cooked in cups over water. Neither is difficult, but both live or die on temperature control.
- The hinge: stop the custard earlyOscar's warning that "the custard will not froth in the freezer if cooked much" is the point of the whole recipe. Egg yolk proteins that have set too firmly cannot hold air, so an overcooked base churns dense and greasy. Pull it at 175-180F, when it coats a spoon, and strain immediately into a cold bowl.
- Quantities in the large versionOne quart of cream, twelve ounces of sugar (about 1 3/4 cups) and twelve yolks makes a rich, very sweet base by modern taste; six to eight ounces of sugar is closer to current ice cream practice. It yields roughly 2 quarts churned, serving 10-12.
- "Set on the fire again for one minute"Take this as an approximation, not a timing. Use low heat and a wooden spoon, stirring constantly across the bottom of the pan, and judge by thickness rather than the clock. A quart of hot cream and twelve yolks will thicken in well under a minute in a thin pan and rather longer in a heavy one.
- Freezing without a hand-crank freezer"Freeze and beat lightly" most likely describes a salt-and-ice freezer, though the text does not say so and the same words would suit still-freezing with beating. Chill the strained base thoroughly, ideally overnight, then run it in an ice cream machine; the mixture must be cold going in or the butterfat churns to grains.
- Vanilla beanSplit the bean and scrape the seeds in as well as steeping the pod. One plump bean is right for a quart. If substituting extract, use 1 to 2 teaspoons and add it after the custard is off the heat, since alcohol carries the aroma off with the steam.
- The small version is a pot de cremeTwo and one-half pints of milk is 5 cups; five yolks and only two tablespoons of sugar make a lean, barely sweet custard, and three to four tablespoons suits modern taste better. It fills about seven or eight 6-ounce cups.
- "A slow fire" and the water bathThe pan of water must never come above a bare simmer, or the custards curdle and weep. A moderate oven around 325F will do the same job with less attention, though the timing will be longer than the fifteen to twenty minutes the recipe gives for the stovetop; judge by a slight wobble at the centre. The recipe directs cooling them in the water.
- Strain, both timesThe "pointed strainer" is a chinois. Any fine sieve works, and skipping it leaves flecks of set egg and bits of bean pod in an otherwise smooth custard.
Oscar Tschirky presided over the dining rooms of the Waldorf and then the Waldorf-Astoria from the 1890s, and his 1896 Cook Book is essentially a working record of a large French-trained hotel kitchen written down for American households. The two entries here are the same crème anglaise split by scale and purpose: the "large" quart-of-cream batch goes to the ice cream freezer for the dining room, the "small" one is portioned into cups as petits pots de crème.