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Rich Custard
Mrs. Morgan.
One quart of cream, the yolks of six eggs, six ounces of powdered white sugar, a small pinch of salt, two tablespoons of brandy, one tablespoon of peach water, half a tablespoon of lemon brandy, an ounce of blanched almonds pounded to a paste; mix the cream with the sugar, and the yolks of the eggs well beaten; scald them together in a tin pail in boiling water, stirring all the time until sufficiently thick; when cold, add the other ingredients, and pour into custard cups.
A stirred custard base, thickened over water and flavored only after cooling. Two of its flavorings are homemade nineteenth-century infusions with no supermarket equivalent.
- The hinge: never let it boilYolks and cream set at about 170-175F; past 180F they curdle. "Scald them together in a tin pail in boiling water" means a double boiler with the water at a bare simmer, stirred constantly until the custard coats the back of a spoon. Strain it through a fine sieve as soon as it comes off the heat.
- VesselsThe "tin pail" is simply a metal container set in a pan of hot water. Any stainless bowl or the top of a double boiler does the same job; avoid unlined copper or cast iron with an egg mixture.
- MeasuresA quart of cream is 4 cups. Six ounces of sugar is a weight, not a volume, and works out to roughly 7/8 cup of granulated. "Powdered white sugar" in this period means finely ground granulated sugar, not modern confectioners' sugar, which contains cornstarch.
- Peach waterThis was a household infusion of peach leaves or cracked peach kernels, prized because it tastes of almond. Both contain cyanogenic compounds, and the flavoring has largely fallen out of ordinary use; leave it out and lean on the almonds already in the recipe, or a few drops of commercial almond extract.
- Lemon brandyBrandy steeped with lemon peel for a week or two; it appears often as a standing flavoring in nineteenth-century American recipe books. Half a tablespoon of brandy plus a fine grating of lemon zest gives the same effect.
- The almondsAn ounce of blanched almonds pounded to a paste means a smooth paste, not a coarse grind. Work them in a mortar or small processor with a spoonful of the sugar so they do not turn oily, then whisk the paste into the cold custard and strain again if you want it perfectly smooth.
- Why the spirits go in coldAdding brandy to a hot custard drives off the aroma and can encourage curdling. Chill the base fully, then stir in the flavorings, then pour into cups and refrigerate.
- YieldAbout a quart of finished custard, or eight half-cup custard cups. It is a spoon dessert, served cold and unbaked, and keeps two days covered in the refrigerator.
This is a boiled custard rather than a baked one -- the same family as the drinking custards and "floating island" bases that ran through American dessert cookery for most of the nineteenth century -- and its richness sits entirely in the ratio: six yolks and no whites to a quart of cream. What dates it most precisely are the flavorings. Before bottled extracts were cheap and reliable, a well-run kitchen kept its own infusions on a shelf: brandy on lemon peel, brandy on rose, and peach water drawn from the leaves or kernels of the tree, all of them doing the work that a small brown bottle of vanilla or almond extract does now. The Home Cook Book belongs to the Chicago compiled-cookbook tradition of the 1870s, in which contributions were solicited from named local women -- here Mrs. Morgan -- and sold for the benefit of a charity, which is why the book reads less like a single author's system than a neighborhood's collective habits, spirit cupboard and all.