Take four large ripe lemons, and roll them under your hand on the table to increase the juice. Then squeeze them into a bowl, and mix with the juice a very small tea-cup full of cold water. Use none of the peel. Add gradually sufficient sugar to make it very sweet. Beat twelve eggs till quite light, and then stir the lemon juice gradually into them, beating very hard at the last. Put the mixture into cups, and bake it ten minutes. When done, grate nutmeg over the top of each, and set them among ice, or in a very cold place.
These custards being made without milk, can be prepared at a short notice; they will be found very fine.
Orange custards may be made in the same manner.
Top and tail two quarts of green gooseberries. Stew them in a very little water; stirring and mashing them frequently. When they have stewed till entirely to pieces, take them out, and with a wooden spoon press the pulp through a cullender. Stir in (while the pulp is hot) a table-spoonful of butter, and sufficient sugar to make it very sweet. Beat six eggs very light. Simmer the gooseberry pulp over a gentle fire, and gradually stir the beaten eggs into it. When it comes to a boil, take it off immediately, stir it very hard, and set it out to cool. Serve it up cold in glasses or custard cups, grating some nutmeg; over each.
Scald and blanch half a pound of shelled sweet almonds, and three ounces of shelled bitter almonds; throwing them as you do them into a large bowl of cold water. Then pound them one at a time in a mortar; pouring in frequently a little rose water to prevent their oiling, and becoming dark-coloured and heavy. Melt a quarter of a pound of loaf-sugar in a quart of cream or rich milk, and stir in by degrees the pounded almonds. Beat ten eggs very light, and stir them gradually into the mixture; adding a powdered nutmeg, and a tea-spoonful of powdered mace and cinnamon mixed. Then put the whole into a pitcher, and place it in a kettle or pan of boiling water, the water coming up to the lower part of the neck of the pitcher. Set it over hot coals, and let it boil (stirring it all the time) till it is quite thick, but not till it curdles. Then take the pitcher out of the water; pour the custard into a large bowl, and stir it till it cools. Put it into glass cups, and send it to table cold. Sweeten some cream or white of egg. Beat it to stiff froth, and pile it on the top of the custards.
To a pound of grated cocoa-nut allow a pint of unskimmed milk, and six ounces of white sugar. Beat very light the yolks of six eggs. Stir them gradually into the milk, alternately with the cocoa-nut and sugar. Put the mixture into a pitcher; set it in a vessel of boiling water; place it on hot coals, and simmer it till it is very smooth and thick; stirring it all the time. As soon as it comes to a hard boil, take it off the fire; pour it into a large bowl, and set it out to cool. When cold, put it into glass cups. Beat to a stiff froth the white of egg that was left, and pile it on the custards.