POTATOE-FLOUR PUDDING.—Boil a quart of rich milk; and while boiling, stir in gradually a quarter of a pound of potatoe-flour well pulverized; add a quarter of a pound of sugar, three ounces of butter, and a tea-spoonful of powdered nutmeg and cinnamon. When it has thoroughly boiled, set it to cool. When cold, stir in, by degrees, four eggs well beaten. Put it into a deep dish, and bake it half an hour. Send it to table cold with white sugar sifted over the top.
GREEN CUSTARD.—Pound in a marble or white-ware mortar a sufficient quantity of fresh spinach, till you have extracted as much green juice as will half fill a half-pint tumbler, or two common-sized wine-glasses. Mix this quantity of spinach juice with a quart of rich unskimmed milk, and a quarter of a pound of loaf-sugar, broken very small. Flavour it with a wine-glass of peach water, or with the yellow rind of two large lemons grated off on some of the largest lumps of the sugar. Or, for the flavouring, you may use a vanilla bean, or a handful of bitter almonds or peach-kernels, boiled a long time in half a pint of milk, which must then be strained, and mixed with the other milk. Beat very light eight eggs, or the yolks only of sixteen; mix them with the milk, &c., (having first strained the beaten eggs,) and having stirred the whole very hard, pour it into a white-ware pitcher, and set it into a pot rather more than half-full of boiling water. Place it on a stove or a bed of hot coals on the hearth, and stir it to the bottom, and watch it continually till it has almost come to a boil. When very near boiling, take it off the fire immediately; for if it quite boils, it will curdle. Set it away to get cold. When lukewarm it will be an improvement to stir into it two table-spoonfuls or more of rose-water. Cover the bottom of a large glass-bowl or a deep dish, with slices of sponge-cake or Naples biscuit. Then put on green sweetmeats, such as preserved goose-berries, green gages, green grapes, or green citron melon. When the custard is quite cold pour it on, and fill up the bowl with it. If made as above, this will be found both delicious and ornamental for a dessert, or supper table.
It may be served up in glass cups; putting into the bottom of each cup a portion of sponge-cake, then a portion of green sweetmeats, and then filling up with the green custard after it has become cold.
Pistachio-nuts pounded in a mortar will give a fine green colour.
RED CUSTARD—May be made according to the foregoing receipt, only colouring it red by adding a teacup-full of milk, in which has been steeped a small thin muslin bag filled with alkanet. Instead of green sweet-meats, use preserved cherries, strawberries, or raspberries.
Alkanet is to be bought at the druggists, is very cheap, perfectly innoxious, and is now much used for colouring confectionary. The colour it imparts is more beautiful than any other red.
You may obtain a good red colouring by pounding boiled beets in a mortar. Pounded beet-leaves will also furnish a juice for colouring red.