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Vanilla Custard for Puddings
Two raw eggs, two ounces powdered sugar, one-half pint cold milk, three drops vanilla essence. Break the eggs in a bowl, add the sugar and sharply beat with the wire whisk for three minutes or until well thickened. Add the milk and essence and briskly mix with a whisk for two minutes. Then the custard preparation is ready for use.
This is a base, not a finished sauce: eggs, sugar, milk and vanilla whisked cold, ready to be poured over bread, sponge or rice and baked, or to be cooked gently into a pouring custard. Nothing in the original brings it to temperature, so how you use it matters.
- The measurements in modern termsHalf a pint is 1 cup (240 ml) of milk. Two ounces of sugar is about 57 g, a scant third of a cup by volume — weigh it if you can, since sugar volume varies.
- "Powdered sugar" is not confectioners' sugarIn books of this period the term means finely ground granulated sugar, what is now sold as caster or superfine sugar. Modern powdered sugar contains cornstarch, which will cloud the custard and slightly thicken it.
- Vanilla essenceThree drops of a concentrated bottled essence is a very small quantity, and modern pure vanilla extract is weaker; an eighth to a quarter teaspoon is a reasonable guess rather than a fixed equivalence, so add to taste. Add it with the milk, as written.
- The hinge: heat, if any, must be gentleIf you cook this into a pouring custard rather than baking it inside a pudding, keep it below a simmer and stir constantly to about 175F (80C), when it coats a spoon. Boiling it will scramble the eggs, and there is no flour or cornstarch here to protect them.
- Baked in a puddingThe original gives no oven instructions of any kind. If you use it in a bread or rice pudding, standard modern practice is to pour it over the assembled dish and bake at about 325F in a water bath until just set with a faint wobble at the center, roughly 35 to 45 minutes for a shallow dish.
- If you serve it uncookedAs written, the mixture is raw egg. Anyone serving it that way to small children, pregnant women or the elderly should use pasteurized shell eggs or a carton of pasteurized whole egg.
- YieldAbout a pint, a cup and a half or so — enough sauce for four modest servings, or enough custard to bind roughly four cups of cubed bread.
Filippini's book runs through the international repertoire of a professional New York kitchen, and this entry is the plainest possible version of what French cooks call the appareil — the working mixture kept ready to pour rather than a dish in itself. It is a thin cousin of crème anglaise, four ingredients and no thickener, which is why the instructions end at "ready for use": the pudding it was destined for would supply the starch and the oven. The reference to vanilla "essence" measured in drops suggests a kitchen with commercial bottled extract to hand rather than one splitting and infusing a bean. Custards of this kind were a common finish for leftover bread, rice and sponge cake.