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Irish Delight
1 pint (2 cups) milk 6 tablespoonfuls cornstarch 1 teaspoonful vanilla extract 2 beaten eggs 2 bay leaves 4 tablespoonfuls sugar Fine breadcrumbs Smoking hot fat Blend the cornstarch with a little cold milk.
Infuse the bay leaves in the milk over the fire for ten minutes, strain, add the sugar to the milk and dissolve over the fire. Now add the moistened cornstarch and vanilla, and boil and stir until the mixture leaves the sides of the pan. Spread to an inch in thickness on a wet plate, and leave until cold. Cut into pieces two inches in size.
Brush over with the beaten eggs; dip in the bread crumbs; then again in egg and bread crumbs and fry in smoking hot fat. Drain, sieve over with fine sugar, and serve for a hot sweet. 3 eggs
A fried custard square — cornstarch-set milk, chilled firm, breaded and deep-fried. The hinge is the chilling: the slab must be cold and completely set, or it will slump the moment it hits the fat.
- Chill it properlyAn inch-thick slab needs several hours in the refrigerator, and overnight is better. The recipe says only "leave until cold"; a barely-cool paste will collapse in the fryer.
- Six tablespoons of cornstarch is correctThat is roughly 45-50g to two cups of milk, far stiffer than a pouring custard. It is meant to be cuttable, closer to a firm blancmange, and reducing it will cost you the whole dish.
- The stray "3 eggs"The ingredient list says two beaten eggs and the line at the end says three. Two are enough to bind the crumb coating; the trailing figure is almost certainly a compositor's error or a note for a doubled batch.
- Bay in a sweetTen minutes of infusion in the milk over heat gives a faint resinous warmth behind the vanilla. Use the two leaves and strain them out as directed; longer steeping can turn medicinal.
- Smoking hot fatIn practice 350-375F. Fat actually smoking is past its point and will taste scorched; use a thermometer and a neutral oil with a high smoke point rather than judging by haze.
- Double breadingThe two rounds of egg and crumb are not optional padding. A single coat cracks as the custard warms and softens, and the filling leaks into the oil.
- Fry in batchesTwo to three minutes, turning once, until deep gold. The interior only needs warming through; the coating dictates the timing.
- YieldA pint of milk spread an inch deep and cut in two-inch squares gives roughly seven or eight pieces — about four servings as a hot pudding. Dust with confectioners' sugar (the "fine sugar") just before it goes to table.
Fried custard squares turn up across Europe under local names — leche frita in Spain, crema fritta in northern Italy, crème frite in France — and the technique is old: set a very stiff milk pudding, cut it cold, crumb it and fry it, which turns a nursery dish into something for the dinner table. Why this version is called "Irish Delight" is not clear, and the name looks like the sort of decorative label English and American cookbooks of the period attached freely to dishes with no particular national claim; there is nothing distinctly Irish in the method or the ingredients. The bay leaf infusion is the older touch. Before vanilla extract became cheap and widely available — a shift usually placed in this period, though the chronology is not firmly established — English cooks flavoured milk puddings with bay or lemon peel steeped in the hot milk, and this recipe catches the moment when both were used together — the old aromatic and the new bottled essence in the same pan.