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Chicken Custard
When boiling a fowl for salad or other purposes take a pint of the broth. Season as needed with salt and a little pepper. Heat and pour very slowly over two eggs that have been slightly beaten. Cook in a double boiler until the mixture thickens.
Pour into small cups that have been rinsed with cold water and set away to chill. This makes a good relish for an invalid.
A savory stirred custard built on chicken broth rather than milk, from the invalid-cookery tradition. It is simple, but the egg-to-liquid ratio and the cooking temperature decide whether it succeeds.
- A pint is two cupsTwo eggs to a pint of broth is a very lean ratio — roughly one egg per cup, where a set custard normally wants one egg per half cup. Expect a soft, spoonable, pourable custard rather than something that unmolds; if you want it firm enough to turn out of the cup, use four eggs to the pint.
- Skim and strain the broth firstBroth from a boiled fowl carries fat and fine particles that will bead on the surface and cloud the custard. Skim it well and pass it through a fine sieve or cloth before heating.
- Temper slowly, and mean itPouring hot broth into beaten eggs too quickly scrambles them, and there is no rescuing a savory custard once it curdles. Add the first ladleful in a thin stream while whisking, then the rest more freely.
- The hinge: hold it under a simmerEgg proteins set between about 160F and 180F. In a double boiler keep the water at a bare tremble, never a rolling boil, and stir constantly until the mixture coats a spoon. Boiling water underneath will drive the custard past setting into grainy curds.
- Rinsing the cupsWetting a mould with cold water is a traditional trick said to help a chilled custard slip free of the china. A very light film of neutral oil is sometimes used for the same purpose.
- Seasoning cold foodChilling mutes salt considerably. Season the broth a little more assertively than tastes right hot, or the finished custard will read flat.
- Yield and keepingA pint fills about four small custard cups. Cover and refrigerate, and eat within a day or two.
- If you would rather bake itThe same mixture set in cups in a water bath at 325F, until just barely trembling at the center, gives a smoother result than stirring — though it will no longer be the loose, spoonable relish the original intends.
Books of this kind devoted whole chapters to what was called invalid cookery: light, mild, easily digested dishes for the sick, the elderly and the convalescent, at a time when a long recovery at home was the ordinary course of most illnesses. Chicken broth was its foundation stone, appearing as clear soup, as chicken jelly stiffened with its own gelatin, and — as here — bound with egg into a soft custard that needed no chewing. The recipe's opening is telling: the fowl has already been boiled for salad, and the cook is being shown that the cooking water is itself an ingredient, not waste. The word relish in the last line carries its older sense of something appetizing offered to tempt a poor appetite, rather than a condiment.