Custards

—good custard forms, perhaps, the best cold sweet sauce known. It can be made very cheaply, and, on the other hand, it may be made in such a manner as to be very expensive. We will first describe how to make the most expensive kind of custard, as very often we can gather ideas from a high-class model and carry them out in an inexpensive way. The highest class custard is made by only using yolks of eggs instead of whole eggs, and we can use cream in addition to milk. The great art in making custard is to take care it does not curdle. Six yolks of eggs, half a pint of milk, half a pint of cream, sweetened, would, of course, form a very expensive custard. An ordinary custard can be made as follows:—take four large or five small eggs, beat them up very thoroughly, and add them gradually to a pint of sweetened milk that has been boiled separately. In order to thicken the custard, it is a good plan to put it in a jug and stand the jug in a saucepan of boiling water, and stir the custard till it is sufficiently thick. Custard can be flavoured in various ways. One of the cheapest and perhaps nicest is to boil one or two bay-leaves in the milk. Custard can also be flavoured by the addition of a small quantity of the essence of vanilla; if you use a fresh pod vanilla, tie it up in a little piece of muslin and have a string to it. This can be boiled in the milk till the milk is sufficiently flavoured, and this pod can be used over and over again. Of course, as it loses its flavour, it will have to remain in the milk longer.