DOMESTIC RECEIPTS.
CUSTARDS, CREAMS, JELLIES, AND BLANC MANGE.
[Second article.]
Common Baked Custard.—Mix a quart of new milk with eight well-beaten eggs, strain the mixture through a fine sieve, and sweeten it with from five to eight ounces of sugar, according to the taste; add a small pinch of salt, and pour the custard into a deep dish, with or without a lining or rim of paste; grate nutmeg or lemon rind over the top, and bake it in a very slow oven from twenty to thirty minutes, or longer, should it not be firm in the centre. A custard, if well made, and properly baked, will be quite smooth when cut, without the honey-combed appearance which a hot oven gives; and there will be no whey in the dish. New milk, one quart; eggs, eight; sugar, five to eight oz.; salt, one-quarter salt-spoonful; nutmeg or lemon-grate; baked, slow oven, twenty to thirty minutes, or more.
Chocolate Custards.—Dissolve gently by the side of the fire an ounce and a half of the best chocolate in rather more than a wineglassful of water, and then boil it until it is perfectly smooth; mix with it a pint of milk well flavored with lemon-peel or vanilla, and two ounces of fine sugar, and when the whole boils, stir to it five well-beaten eggs that have been strained. Put the custard into a jar or jug, set it into a pan of boiling water, and stir it without ceasing until it is thick. Do not put it into glasses or a dish till nearly or quite cold. These, as well as all other custards, are infinitely finer when made with the yolks only of the eggs.
Rice Custards without Cream.—Take one teaspoonful of rice flour, a pint of new milk, the yolks of three eggs, sugar to your liking; mix the rice very smooth, and stir it, with the eggs, into the boiling milk. An excellent dish for children.
A finer Baked Custard.—Boil together gently, for five minutes, a pint and a half of new milk, a few grains of salt, the very thin rind of a lemon, and six ounces of loaf sugar; stir these boiling, but very gradually, to the well-beaten yolks of ten fresh eggs, and the whites of four; strain the mixture, and add to it half a pint of good cream; let it cool, and then flavor it with a few spoonfuls of brandy or a little ratafia; finish and bake it by the directions given for the common custard above; or pour it into small well-buttered cups, and bake it very slowly from ten to twelve minutes.
Apple or Gooseberry Souffle.—Scald and sweeten the fruit, beat it through a sieve, and put it into a tart dish. When cold, pour a rich custard over it, about two inches deep; whip the whites of the eggs, of which the custard was made, to a snow, and lay it in small rough pieces on the custard; sift fine sugar over, and put it into a slack oven for a short time. It will make an exceedingly pretty dish.
Gooseberry-fool.—Put the fruit into a stone jar, with some good Lisbon sugar; set the jar on a stove, or in a saucepan of water over the fire; if the former, a large spoonful of water should be added to the fruit. When it is done enough to pulp, press it through a cullender; have ready a teacupful of new milk and the same quantity of raw cream boiled together, and left to be cold; then sweeten pretty well with fine sugar, and mix the pulp by degrees with it. Or:—Mix equal proportion of gooseberry pulp and custard.
Apple-fool may be made the same as gooseberry, except that when stewed the apples should be peeled and pulped.