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Strawberry
Cream.—The juice only of the strawberry should be
used. This juice should be mixed with the powdered sugar and
then used for mixing with the whipped cream. It is a
mistake, in making creams, to have too much flavouring. The
juice of a quarter of a pound of ripe red strawberries would
be sufficient for a quart of cream.
Pistachio
Cream.—Take about half a pound of pistachio
kernels, throw them for a minute or two into boiling water,
and then rub off the skins, throwing them into cold water
like you do in blanching almonds. Pound these in a mortar
with a tablespoonful of orange-flower water, and mix a
little spinach extract to give it a colour. Now mix this
with the whipped sweetened cream very thoroughly. This
bright green cream makes a very elegant dish.
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.
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