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Creme Patissiere
Place three egg yolks in a bowl with two ounces sugar and half ounce flour. Stir well a wooden spoon for two minutes. Place on the range in a small saucepan one and a half gills milk, and as soon as it comes to a boil add half gill cream and pour, little by little, over the yolks, constantly mixing while adding it, and return the whole to the pan; boil for three minutes, continually mixing, remove from the fire, add a teaspoon of vanilla essence and briskly whisk for two minutes, let cool off and use as required.
A compact, classic pastry cream thickened with flour rather than cornstarch. The proportions are sound; only the units and a couple of the instructions need translating.
- GillsA gill is a quarter-pint: half a cup in American measure, though an imperial gill is 5 fl oz. Read as American measure, one and a half gills of milk is about 3/4 cup and half a gill of cream about 1/4 cup. The finished batch comes to roughly a cup of pastry cream, enough for a small tart or about a dozen small choux buns.
- WeightsTwo ounces of sugar is about 1/4 cup granulated. Half an ounce of flour is a scant 2 tablespoons. Both are worth weighing if you have a scale, since the flour is the only thickener apart from the yolks.
- Beat the yolks properlyTwo minutes with a wooden spoon means beating the yolks, sugar and flour to a pale, ribbon-thick paste with no dry flour left. Skip this and the flour is liable to show up as lumps that are difficult to whisk out later.
- TemperingPouring the hot milk in "little by little, constantly mixing" is the step that keeps the yolks from scrambling. Add a ladleful first, whisk it smooth, then add the rest in a steady stream.
- The three-minute boilUnlike a plain custard, this one must actually boil. Flour-thickened creams need a full boil to gelatinize the starch and to deactivate the enzyme in raw yolk that would otherwise thin the cream as it stands. Whisk hard and continuously; the mixture will thicken, then loosen slightly as it comes to the boil, which is the sign it is done.
- Vanilla essenceA teaspoon of extract added off the heat is right, since the alcohol carries the flavour and boils away if added earlier. A split vanilla bean infused in the milk gives a better result if you have one.
- Cooling and keepingPress plastic film directly onto the surface as it cools to stop a skin forming, and chill promptly rather than leaving it at room temperature. Use within two days; it will set firm in the refrigerator and needs a brisk whisk to loosen before use.