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Leche Cream
(A convent recipe.) Beat yolks of 3 eggs, and add the beaten white of 1, add carefully 1 1/2 pints of milk, blended with 4 tablespoonfuls of cornstarch, as much sugar, and a spoonful of grated lemon peel. Boil all, but stir to prevent burning, until smooth. Pour into a shallow dish, lined with sliced sponge cake or lady fingers, through a sieve. Dust, when cold, a pattern of cinnamon or nutmeg on top, and serve with cream.
A cornstarch-thickened custard poured hot over sponge cake — essentially a Spanish crema set in a shallow dish. Two things in the wording need decoding before you start.
- "As much sugar"This means the same measure as the cornstarch: 4 tablespoons. That is modest for 3 cups of milk, so taste and add more if you want it sweeter than a nursery custard.
- PintsThe book is American, so 1 1/2 pints is 3 cups (about 720 ml). If you read it as imperial pints you get 30 fl oz and a noticeably looser cream.
- Temper the eggs"Add carefully" is the hinge. Whisk the cornstarch into cold milk first, warm it, then pour a little into the beaten yolks before returning everything to the pan. Dumping cold eggs into hot milk gives you sweet scrambled egg.
- Boil, and mean itCornstarch needs to reach a full bubble to thicken properly and lose its raw chalky taste — hold it there a minute, stirring constantly with a flat-ended spatula so nothing catches in the corners of the pan.
- Through a sieveThe sieve goes between the pan and the dish, not over the finished cream. It catches any coagulated egg and the grated lemon peel.
- Lemon peelGrate only the yellow zest; the white pith turns the custard bitter. A spoonful is roughly the zest of one large lemon.
- Setting and servingPour hot over the cake so it soaks, then chill until thoroughly cold before dusting with cinnamon or nutmeg.
- Lady fingersShop-bought savoiardi are dry and hard and will absorb a good deal of liquid — no bad thing here, but do not expect them to keep any bite.
Leche crema — literally "milk cream" — is the Spanish and Latin American family of stirred custards that includes natillas and, thickened harder and burnt on top, crema catalana. The lemon peel and the dusting of cinnamon are characteristic, in contrast to the vanilla-scented custards of France and England. Iberian convents were for centuries great producers of egg-rich sweets, and their dulces de convento were sold at the turn-gate to support the house; the often-repeated explanation that the surplus yolks came from wineries clarifying wine with egg whites is traditional rather than documented. Cornstarch makes a forgiving custard that a home cook can boil without curdling.